Swing Low by Miriam Toews

Swing Low by Miriam Toews

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 schoolteacher, Mel was a pillar of his close-knit community. Yet after a lifetime of struggling with bipolar disorder, he could no longer face the darkness that clouded his world. In this moving meditation on illness, family, faith, and love, Mel's daughter, critically acclaimed novelist and reporter Miriam Toews, recounts her father's life as he would have told it, in his own voice, right up to the day of his final walk.

Swing Low is a bold, gracefully written, and compassionate recounting of one man's heartbreaking battle with depression.

Miriam Toews is the author of A Complicated Kindness, which won the Governor General's Award and was a finalist for the Giller Prize, A Boy of Good Breeding, and Swing Low: A Life, which won the Governor General's Award and was a finalist for the Giller Prize. She's written for NPR's This American Life and the New York Times Magazine, among other publications. She is a resident of Winnipeg, Manitoba.