Memoir Relationship

Sydney McLaughlin knows about facing down obstacles. She has mastered not only racing over hurdles on the track but also tackling challenges in her personal life—from lifelong battles with perfectionism and anxiety to persistent questions about her identity and whether she was "enough." Her pursuit of perfection and people-pleasing continued for years until God broke into her story with his overwhelming grace, transforming love, and empowering truth. In Far Beyond Gold, Sydney will share aspects of her life story and personhood she has never shared publicly before.

After selling her first novel - a dream she'd worked long and hard for - Stephanie Danler knew she should be happy. Instead, she found herself driven to face the difficult past she'd left behind a decade ago: a mother disabled by years of alcoholism, further handicapped by a tragic brain aneurysm; a father who abandoned the family when she was three, now a meth addict in and out of recovery.

"One day, one of Bozana's Skojo's friends told her she was 'a good poor'. Bewildered by the words at first, Bozana gradually came to realize they really did describe her - someone who was never overcome by adversity, but who fixed up her hair, put on a little lipstick and her 'game face' to work her way out of any difficulties that fate tossed her way. She realized it was a strategy for living that could apply to any situation.

Well, 1983 certainly wasn't boring for the Welch family. Somehow, between their handsome father's mysterious death, their glamorous soap-opera-star mother's cancer diagnosis, and a phalanx of lawyers intent on bankruptcy proceedings, the four Welch siblings managed to handle each new heartbreaking misfortune in the same way they dealt with the unexpected arrival of the forgotten-about Chilean exchange student—together.

A booksmart kid from Toronto, Eternity Martis was excited to move away to Western University for her undergraduate degree. But as one of the few Black students there, she soon discovered that the campus experiences she'd seen in movies were far more complex in reality. Over the next four years, Eternity learned more about what someone like her brought out in other people than she did about herself. She was confronted by White students in blackface at parties, dealt with being the only person of colour in class and was tokenized by her romantic partners.

Mom loved adages, quotes, slogans. There were always little reminders pasted on the kitchen wall. For example, the word THINK. I found THINK thumbtacked on a bulletin board in her darkroom. I saw it Scotch-taped on a pencil box she’d collaged. I even found a pamphlet titled THINK on her bedside table. Mom liked to THINK.

This deeply personal memoir, cowritten by singer-songwriter, renowned mental health advocate, and recent Order of Canada recipient Séan McCann and wife Andrea Aragon, leaves no stone unturned. Detailing in powerful and lyrical prose a Newfoundland childhood indoctrinated in strict Catholic faith, the creation of the wildly successful Great Big Sea, and the battle with alcoholism that nearly cost them everything, McCann and Aragon offer listeners a story of reaching international fame and finding rock bottom.

The death of a sibling is unlike any other. Gloria Reuben's little brother died just before his 22nd birthday. Two decades later, her oldest brother, Denis, died two weeks short of his 60th birthday. In My Brothers' Keeper, Gloria bares her soul as she reveals the intimate details of her life at home as a young girl. How the death of her father when she was 12 shaped her view of love and life. How David's death was the impetus for her move from Canada to the United States. And how her brother Denis was her heart's twin in a multitude of ways.

In her midforties, Gwendolyn Bounds attended a dinner party where someone asked a little girl: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It struck Bounds: In middle age, no one asks you that anymore. So she put the question to herself. The answer set her on an unexpected five-year path of transformation from an unathletic office executive glued to her screens to an age-group medalist and world championship competitor in obstacle course racing—a demanding military-style sport requiring speed, endurance, mobility, and strength.

Leanne Friesen thought she knew a lot about bereavement. She had studied it in school and preached at memorial services. But only when her own sister died from cancer did she learn, in her very bones, what grieving people don't need—and what they do. In Grieving Room, Friesen writes with vulnerability, wisdom, and somehow even wit about the stark and sacred lessons learned at deathbeds and funerals, and pushes back against a world that wants to minimize our sorrow and avoid our despair.

At the age of five, Megan Phelps-Roper began protesting homosexuality and other alleged vices alongside fellow members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. Founded by her grandfather and consisting almost entirely of her extended family, the tiny group would gain worldwide notoriety for its pickets at military funerals and celebrations of death and tragedy.

Beth is a sweet-natured child who appears to have been well looked after. But it isn't long before Cathy begins to have concerns that the relationship between Beth and her father is not as it should be. Little Beth, aged 7, has been brought up by her father Derek after her mother left when she was a toddler. When Derek is suddenly admitted to hospital with psychiatric problems, Beth is taken into care and arrives at Cathy's.

Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, home to only a handful of people, is a harsh and lonely place. So when James Campbell's cousin Heimo Korth asked him to spend a summer building a cabin in the rugged Interior, Campbell hesitated about inviting his 15-year-old daughter, Aidan, to join him. Would she be able to withstand clouds of mosquitoes, the threat of grizzlies, bathing in an ice-cold river, and hours of grueling labor peeling and hauling logs? But once there, Aidan embraced the wild.

To everyone else, Terri White appeared to be living the dream, named one of Folio's Top Women in US Media and accruing further awards for the magazines she was editing. In reality, she was rapidly skidding towards a mental health crisis that would land her in a locked psychiatric ward as her past caught up with her. As well as growing up in a household in poverty, Terri endured sexual and physical abuse at the hands of a number of her mother's partners.

The Caetanos move into a doomed house in the highway village of Happyland before an inevitable divorce pulls Cody’s parents in separate directions. His mom, Mindimooye, having discovered her Anishinaabe birth family and Sixties Scoop origin story, embarks on a series of fraught relationships and fresh starts. His dad, O Touro, a Portuguese immigrant and drifter, falls back into “big do, little think” behaviour, despite his best intentions.

Held against her will and raped by her 38-year-old boss, 19-year-old Anna tries to make sense of her unbelievable situation. How did an innocent friendship with her boss turn into weeks of forced sex and the inability to leave her oppressor's side? Furthermore, what happens when weeks of rape result in a pregnancy? This true-life novel depicts a graphic and raw recounting of the unimaginable horrors of the Summer of 2010.

Anne Lamott meets Elizabeth Gilbert in this inspirational, side-splittingly funny exploration of the power of living with love, forgiveness, and honesty. Glennon Melton became a sensation when her personal essays started going viral. Giving language to our universal (yet often secret) experiences, her hilarious and poignant observations were read by millions, shared among friends, discussed at water coolers, quoted in The New York Times, and have inspired a social movement.

When we first meet the young man at the center of this extraordinary and moving story, he is one of 13 children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or any of the things a child might learn in school. And he has no serious experience playing organized football.

Ashley is a young single mum raising her daughter, Eden, and working hard to do the very best job she can - until one night she can't find a babysitter and makes the decision to leave Eden home alone for a couple of hours, asleep inside a wardrobe. It is an action that begins a terrible downward spiral for both of them. When Eden arrives at experienced foster carer Louise Allen's home, she has entered the care system because her mother is in prison. Eden is five years old and will not speak to any human.

How do we console each other and ourselves in an age of unbelief? In a series of lapidary meditations on writers, artists, musicians, and their works - from the books of Job and Psalms to Albert Camus, Anna Akhmatova, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and Primo Levi - esteemed writer and historian Michael Ignatieff shows how men and women in extremity have looked to each other across time to recover hope and resilience.