Audiobook6 hours
Sinkhole: The Legacy of a Suicide
Written by Juliet Patterson
Narrated by Lindsey Dorcus
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
()
About this audiobook
A sublimely elegant, fractured reckoning with the legacy and inheritance of suicide in one American family. This stunning elegy that vividly enacts Emily Dickinson’s dictum to “tell it slant,” Sinkhole richly layers personal, familial, political, and environmental histories to provide not answers but essential, heartbreaking truth.
In 2009, Juliet Patterson was recovering from a serious car accident when she learned her father had died by suicide. His death was part of a disturbing pattern in her family. Her father’s father had taken his own life; so had her mother’s. Over the weeks and months that followed, grieving and in physical pain, Patterson kept returning to one question: Why? Why had her family lost so many men, so many fathers, and what lay beneath the silence that had taken hold?
In three graceful movements, Patterson explores these questions. In the winter of her father’s death, she struggles to make sense of the loss—sifting through the few belongings he left behind, looking to signs and symbols for meaning. As the spring thaw comes, she and her mother depart Minnesota for her father’s burial in her parents’ hometown of Pittsburg, Kansas. A once-prosperous town of promise and of violence, against people and the land, Pittsburg is now literally undermined by abandoned claims and sinkholes. There, Patterson carefully gathers evidence and radically imagines the final days of the grandfathers—one a fiery pro-labor politician, the other a melancholy businessman—she never knew. And finally, she returns to her father: to the haunting subjects of goodbyes, of loss, and of how to break the cycle.
In 2009, Juliet Patterson was recovering from a serious car accident when she learned her father had died by suicide. His death was part of a disturbing pattern in her family. Her father’s father had taken his own life; so had her mother’s. Over the weeks and months that followed, grieving and in physical pain, Patterson kept returning to one question: Why? Why had her family lost so many men, so many fathers, and what lay beneath the silence that had taken hold?
In three graceful movements, Patterson explores these questions. In the winter of her father’s death, she struggles to make sense of the loss—sifting through the few belongings he left behind, looking to signs and symbols for meaning. As the spring thaw comes, she and her mother depart Minnesota for her father’s burial in her parents’ hometown of Pittsburg, Kansas. A once-prosperous town of promise and of violence, against people and the land, Pittsburg is now literally undermined by abandoned claims and sinkholes. There, Patterson carefully gathers evidence and radically imagines the final days of the grandfathers—one a fiery pro-labor politician, the other a melancholy businessman—she never knew. And finally, she returns to her father: to the haunting subjects of goodbyes, of loss, and of how to break the cycle.
Related to Sinkhole
Related audiobooks
The Big Book of the Dead Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glass Eye: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Really Isn't About You Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Friendship Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn't Stop Praying (Among Other Things) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Familia Grande: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Her Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Still No Word from You: Notes in the Margin Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fat Time and Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAdult Drama: And Other Essays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSister Golden Hair Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Soul at the White Heat: Inspiration, Obsession, and the Writing Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Angel in My Pocket: A Story of Love, Loss, and Life After Death Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhat’s Not Mine: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI've Been Wrong Before: Essays Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I Never Met a Rattlesnake I Didn't Like Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBody Leaping Backward: Memoir of a Delinquent Girlhood Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Price of the Haircut: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Men Can't Be Saved Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Strong Female Character: What Movies Teach Us Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTasha: A Son's Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inventing the Abbotts: And Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVanishing Twins: A Marriage Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Autoportrait Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Skid Dogs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBonds of Love & Blood: Short Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Point of Vanishing: A Memoir of Two Years in Solitude Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Biography & Memoir For You
From Blood and Ash Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5And Then There Were None Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: One Introvert's Year of Saying Yes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bell Jar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fairy Tale Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Divine Rivals: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Institute: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dutch House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twisted Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Series of Unfortunate Events #1 Multi-Voice, A: The Bad Beginning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The House in the Cerulean Sea Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Local Woman Missing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dead Zone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Later Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good Girls Don't Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Y'all Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ivy League Counterfeiter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Five Years: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paris Apartment: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Child Called It: One Child's Courage to Survive Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5See You on the Way Down: Catch You on the Way Back Up! Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If He Had Been with Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nothing to See Here Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Bulletproof: Protect Yourself, Read People, Influence Situations, and Live Fearlessly Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of September 11, 2001 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Sinkhole
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
1 rating0 reviews