On the Ledge

In 1957, when Amy Turner was four, a priest coaxed her father down from the ledge of a hotel. Newspapers across the country covered his suicide attempt, and after months in a psychiatric facility he returned home. Young Amy was left with a steady, unexplained worry about him, a watchfulness that stayed with her well into adulthood.

By 2010, Amy was a wife, a mother, and a former attorney who had become a schoolteacher, and she believed she had worked through whatever her childhood had left behind. A single misstep at a crosswalk changed that. A pickup truck struck her and came close to killing her, and the accident set off a long and unexpected inner journey. Drawing on Chinese Medicine, Somatic Experiencing, and chance encounters that seemed almost providential, she first works through the shock of her own near-death and then finds herself facing older wounds buried much deeper.

The memoir is candid and personal, with a humorous streak running through Amy's account of coming to understand herself and her parents as separate people, each with their own vulnerabilities. Its larger message is that self-discovery stays open to anyone, whatever their age.