Disaster Falls, Stephane Gerson
Disaster Falls, Stephane Gerson
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Disaster Falls
A Family Story

Author: Stephane Gerson

Narrator: Will Damron

Unabridged: 8 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 01/24/2017


Synopsis

On a day like any other, on a rafting trip down Utah's Green River, Stéphane Gerson's eight-year-old son, Owen, drowned in a spot known as Disaster Falls. That same night, as darkness fell, Stéphane huddled in a tent with his wife, Alison, and their older son, Julian, trying to understand what seemed inconceivable. "It's just the three of us now," Alison said over the sounds of a light rain and, nearby, the rushing river. "We cannot do it alone. We have to stick together."

Disaster Falls chronicles the aftermath of that day and their shared determination to stay true to Alison's resolution. Gerson captures the different ways of grieving that threatened to isolate each of them in their post-Owen worlds and then, with beautiful specificity, shows how he and Alison preserved and reconfigured their marriage from within. Blending family history (including the "good death" of his father, which offers a very different perspective on mortality) and the natural history of the river, he provides an expansive, unflinching meditation on loss, our responsibilities toward our children, and the stories we tell ourselves in the wake of traumatic events.

About Stephane Gerson

Stephane Gerson is a cultural historian and a professor of French studies at New York University. He has won several awards, including the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History and the Laurence Wylie Prize in French Cultural Studies. He lives in Manhattan and Woodstock, New York, with his family.


Reviews

Disaster Falls is a difficult book. No matter how well written, it is still the story of a family learning to live again after losing a child. At the end of July, 2008, the Gerson family, Stéphane, Alison, Julian, and Owen, went on a rafting trip on the Green River. It was one of those professional......more