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On the Ledge

A Memoir

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
In 1957, when Amy Turner was four years old, her father had to be talked down from a hotel ledge by a priest. The story of his attempted suicide received nationwide press coverage, and he spent months in a psychiatric facility before returning home. From then on, Amy constantly worried about him for reasons she didn't yet fully understand, triggering a pattern of hypervigilance that would plague her into adulthood.
In 2010, fifty-five years after her father's attempted suicide, Amy—now a wife, mother, and lawyer-turned-schoolteacher—is convinced she's dealt with all the psychological reverberations of her childhood. Then she steps into a crosswalk and is mowed down by a pickup truck—an accident that nearly kills her, and that ultimately propels her on a remarkable emotional journey. With the help of acupuncture, somatic-oriented therapies, and serendipities that might be attributed to grace, Amy first unravels the trauma of her own brush with death and then, unexpectedly, heals the childhood trauma buried far deeper.
Poignant and intimate, On the Ledge is Amy's insightful and surprisingly humorous chronicle of coming to terms with herself and her parents as the distinct, vulnerable individuals they are. Perhaps more meaningfully, it offers proof that no matter how far along you are in life, it's never too late to find yourself.
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    • Kirkus

      Turner, an educator and former attorney, offers a debut memoir about searching for clarity amid anxiety. In 2010, Turner was hit by a pickup truck when crossing a street in East Hampton, New York, resulting in a concussion and other injuries to her shoulder and back. On the resultant road to recovery she paid visits to a helpful acupuncturist and tried to cope at work, teaching classes despite dizziness and pain. Along the way, she found herself delving into an event in her family's past that occurred when she was 4 years old and that significantly shaped her life. In 1957, in New Haven, Connecticut, Turner's father, who suffered from deep depression, threatened to jump off a hotel window ledge but was talked out of it by a kind priest. Turner's narrative moves back and forth between her own accident and her father's near suicide as she seeks to understand and make peace with her relationship to mental illness. What results is an intriguing memoir that's not one of self-pity--a topic she addresses in a story about her own mother--but one of self-discovery that many readers will find relatable. For example, Turner tracks her anxiety back to her earliest memories, when she and her three siblings were warned to never upset their father. Throughout the work, she effectively paints a vibrant picture of her family; her father was an aspiring writer and her mother, a giftedamateur tennis player, and both were political activists. Their stories shine as Turner shows their journeys as being intertwined with her own. A frank and engaging portrait of one family's struggles with mental illness.

      COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (Online Review)

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  • English

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