Crossing the River: Seven Stories That Saved My Life, A Memoir

by Carol Smith

Overview

A powerful exploration of grief and resilience following the death of the author's son that combines memoir, reportage, and lessons in how to heal

Everyone deals with grief in their own way. Helen Macdonald found solace in training a wild gos­hawk. Cheryl Strayed found strength in hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. For Carol Smith, a Pulitzer Prize­ nominated journalist struggling with the sudden death of her seven-year-old son, Christopher, the way to cross the river of sorrow was through work.

In Crossing the River, Smith recounts how she faced down her crippling loss through reporting a series of profiles of people coping with their own intense chal­lenges, whether a life-altering accident, injury, or diag­nosis. These were stories of survival and transformation, of people facing devastating situations that changed them in unexpected ways. Smith deftly mixes the stories of these individuals and their families with her own account of how they helped her heal. General John Shalikashvili, once the most powerful member of the American military, taught Carol how to face fear with discipline and endurance. Seth, a young boy with a rare and incurable illness, shed light on the totality of her son's experiences, and in turn helps readers see that the value of a life is not measured in days.

Crossing the River is a beautiful and profoundly moving book, an unforgettable journey through grief toward hope, and a valuable, illuminating read for anyone coping with loss.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781647000967
Publisher:	ABRAMS
Publication date:	05/04/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	933,116
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Carol Smith is an award-winning journalist and editor for NPR affiliate KUOW in Seattle. Previously she worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Los Angeles Times. Her newspaper work has won dozens of national and regional awards and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize a remarkable seven times, and her writing has appeared in more than a dozen literary journals. Smith was recently named Editor of the Year by Public Media Journalists Association. One of Carol’s great passions is working with KUOW’s youth radio group, Radioactive, which teaches high school students from diverse backgrounds to tell their personal stories for radio in their own voices.

Editorial Reviews

There is no rule book for how to grieve, so we are left to navigate our own way through it, hopeful that there are compasses in the world to point us in the right direction. Crossing the River is one such compass. An unflinching look at Carol Smith’s grief after the loss of her young son, it illuminates how sometimes going to the very places we want to hide from can show us the way.

author of The Knitting Circle and Comfort: A Journey Through Grief - Ann Hood

This difficult yet hopeful reading journey will appeal to memoir fans and those interested in medical nonfiction.”

Booklist

a powerful, unforgettable memoir...told so compellingly that 15 pages in, no possibility of putting it down existed... Her writing never got in the way of a narrative but rather brought out its fullness... This book represents her triumph.... It’s magnificent.”

The Montana Standard

Crossing the River grapples with an unbearable loss, one that no parent, or reader for that matter, ever wants to confront. Carol Smith dares us to enter this world of grief with her and by doing so gives us a vulnerable and brave story of resilience, hope, and healing that can only be found in communion with others.

author of In Search of the Color Purple - Salamishah Tillet

"The heart-shattering grief Smith expertly weaves throughout the book reads like poetry...an homage to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, but with the tension of Lacy M. Johnson’s The Other Side...each story guides Smith back to herself, and as result shows us all how to live after unimaginable loss."

Hippocampus Magazine

Crossing the River is a searing, luminous, and lyrical work. Carol Smith’s memoir is a meditation on loss and renewal that brims over with courage. At a rough moment for journalists, it reminds us that reporting put to its highest use can be one of the most powerful forces for good the world has ever seen. Ultimately, Crossingthe River is a compelling and eloquent memorial to the young son that Carol Smith loved and lost.

founder, StoryCorps - Dave Isay

In our time of unprecedented loss, Crossing the River is a necessary book—a book about learning how to bear the unbearable that becomes a manual for living. I found myself copying many of its sentences down in a notebook, not just for their wisdom but also for their plainspoken and emotionally precise music. It is beautifully wrought, beautifully thought, and above all beautifully felt, and when I was done I didn’t just admire Carol Smith’s act of memory, witness, and rebirth. I was grateful for it.

Tom Junod

...the stories she collected from that time inform this intimate and humane narrative that should offer solace for readers who have experienced similar circumstances...An uplifting group of moving stories.”
—Kirkus

“a powerful, unforgettable memoir...told so compellingly that 15 pages in, no possibility of putting it down existed... Her writing never got in the way of a narrative but rather brought out its fullness... This book represents her triumph.... It’s magnificent.”
—The Montana Standard

“This difficult yet hopeful reading journey will appeal to memoir fans and those interested in medical nonfiction.”
—Booklist

“There is no rule book for how to grieve, so we are left to navigate our own way through it, hopeful that there are compasses in the world to point us in the right direction. Crossing the River is one such compass. An unflinching look at Carol Smith’s grief after the loss of her young son, it illuminates how sometimes going to the very places we want to hide from can show us the way.”—Ann Hood, author of The Knitting Circle and Comfort: A Journey Through Grief

“Crossing the River grapples with an unbearable loss, one that no parent, or reader for that matter, ever wants to confront. Carol Smith dares us to enter this world of grief with her and by doing so gives us a vulnerable and brave story of resilience, hope, and healing that can only be found in communion with others.”—Salamishah Tillet, author of In Search of the Color Purple

“In our time of unprecedented loss, Crossing the River is a necessary book—a book about learning how to bear the unbearable that becomes a manual for living. I found myself copying many of its sentences down in a notebook, not just for their wisdom but also for their plainspoken and emotionally precise music. It is beautifully wrought, beautifully thought, and above all beautifully felt, and when I was done I didn’t just admire Carol Smith’s act of memory, witness, and rebirth. I was grateful for it.”—Tom Junod

“Crossing the River is a searing, luminous, and lyrical work. Carol Smith’s memoir is a meditation on loss and renewal that brims over with courage. At a rough moment for journalists, it reminds us that reporting put to its highest use can be one of the most powerful forces for good the world has ever seen. Ultimately, Crossingthe River is a compelling and eloquent memorial to the young son that Carol Smith loved and lost.”—Dave Isay, founder, StoryCorps

"The heart-shattering grief Smith expertly weaves throughout the book reads like poetry...an homage to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, but with the tension of Lacy M. Johnson’s The Other Side...each story guides Smith back to herself, and as result shows us all how to live after unimaginable loss." —Hippocampus Magazine

From the Publisher

2021-02-25
A journalist dealing with the tragic death of her young son tells seven stories about people “reinventing, finding purpose, and discovering strength.”

When Smith suddenly lost her 7-year-old son, Christopher, to an abdominal obstruction, she left her freelance writer’s life in Pasadena to find comfort doing the journalism work she loved at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. For a time, she was able to “separate my past from my daily work.” That relative peace ended, however, when she came across information about progeria, a hyper-aging disease that causes children to die before they reach their teens. What she learned led her to write a story about a 10-year-old local boy named Seth who suffered from the disease. Of course, the process was exceedingly difficult because of the memories it brought up about Christopher, but it also made her realize that a short life could still be filled with “wonders” and “love and lots of joy.” The author then wrote more features that touched on different aspects of her continuing grief. The courageous people she interviewed included Billy, who underwent extensive facial reconstruction and was forced to grapple with what it meant to live with a new identity, just as Smith was forced to do after Christopher died; and John Shalikashvili, Bill Clinton’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who suffered a life-changing stroke. As the author explored how someone accustomed to being in control of large-scale situations grappled with regaining such basic functions as balance and bodily movement, she was able to come to grips with her own need for control in a world where the only certainty was uncertainty. Her job at the Post-Intelligencer ended with the paper’s demise as a print publication, but the stories she collected from that time inform this intimate and humane narrative that should offer solace for readers who have experienced similar circumstances.

An uplifting group of moving stories.

Kirkus Reviews