Swing Low. A Life - Miriam Toews

Internationally bestselling author Miriam Toews recounts her father's life as he might have told it, right up to his final day.

One morning, Mel Toews put on his coat and hat, walked out of town, and took his own life. A loving husband and father, a faithful member of the Mennonite church, and an immensely popular school teacher, Mel was a pillar of his close-knit community. Yet after a lifetime of struggling with bipolar disorder, he could no longer face the ruptures in his world. Swing Low is an elegiac ode to a life by an author drawing from the deepest wells of insight and emotion.

“The magic of Swing Low is that Toews makes a life that looked ordinary, even grindingly so, seem exalted.” —Maria Russo, New York Times Book Review

“A touching memoir.” —Publishers Weekly

“Toews' novelistic skills are richly apparent in her evocative characterizations and in the deft drama of the narrative. . . . A profoundly affecting book.” —Toronto Star

“Witty and daring.” —The Guardian

“Audacious, original and profoundly moving . . . . Healing is a likely outcome of a book imbued with the righteous anger, compassion and humanity of Swing Low.” —Globe and Mail (Canada)