From the bestselling author of Women Talking, All My Puny Sorrows, and A Complicated Kindness, and Women Talking comes an extraordinary memoir about her father and his struggle with manic depression.
One morning, Mel Toews put on his coat and hat and walked out of town, prepared to die. A loving husband and father, faithful member of the Mennonite church, and immensely popular school teacher, he was a pillar of his close-knit community. Yet after a lifetime of struggle, he could no longer face the darkness of manic depression. In Swing Low, his daughter Miriam recounts Mel's life as she imagines he would have told it, right up to the day he took his final walk. A gracefully written and compassionate recounting of a man's battle with depression in a small Mennonite community, Swing Low is a moving meditation on illness, family, faith and love.