Those We Leave Behind

Diane picked up her mother's phone. "How do you feel about your mother being let out of prison today after sixty-five years?" the reporter asked. Diane stared at her mother. "My grandmother is alive?" That one phone call hurled shock waves throughout the entire family.1955 - Anna Bergman Craine's life changes in an instant when she commits a crime of passion and is sentenced to life in prison. Leaving behind two young children, she is left alone in the world, never to hear from family or friends again. Decades later, she is set free and finds she has a family that has chosen to forget her. What caused this beautiful, intelligent, young woman to commit such a drastic deed that would pull her away from everyone she loved?2020 - Diane Martin is shocked to learn that not only is her maternal grandmother alive, but she's just been released after decades in prison. Against her aging mother's wishes, she visits the older woman and soon hears a tale of the events that led up to that tragic day in 1955. Diane realizes that her own life has mirrored that of her grandmother's and, had circumstances gone differently that fateful day, she might have experienced the same fate.A heart-wrenching story of a family torn apart because of a moment in time and trying to put the pieces back together after being separated for decades.

Winner of the British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction Finalist for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing Finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-fiction Finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction An incredible work of non-fiction that reads like a thriller, All We Leave Behind is the true story of a family fleeing the death sentence of a ruthless warlord, written by the journalist who broke all her own rules to get them to safety. In 2002, Carol Off and a CBC TV crew encountered an Afghan man with a story to tell. Asad Aryubwal became a key figure in their documentary on the terrible power of thuggish warlords who were working arm in arm with Americans and NATO troops. When Asad publicly exposed the deeds of one of the warlords, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, it set off a chain of events from which there was no turning back. Asad, his wife, Mobina, and their five children had to flee their home. The family faced an uncertain future. But their dilemma compelled a journalist to cross the lines of disinterested reporting and become deeply involved. Together, they navigated the Byzantine international bureaucracy and the decidedly unwelcoming policies of Stephen Harper's government until the family finally found a new home. Carol Off's powerful account traces not only one family's journey and fraught attempts to immigrate to a safe place, it also illustrates what happens when a journalist becomes irrevocably caught up in the lives of the people in her story and finds herself unable to leave them behind.

Have you ever wished that you could be somebody else? Someone completely different? In a brand-new set of more favorable circumstances? Throw off your troubled (or even your nondescript) current life? That's just how Paul Marchildon, in 1963, San Antonio, Texas, felt-when everything was closing in on him. His marriage was quickly unraveling! His modest house was under foreclosure! And his car was about to be repossessed! In addition, he faced an impossible, romantic, situation-vis-a-vis a woman with whom he'd once worked. Paul was sorely tempted to steal $1,000 from his employer! He struggled to resist! Then, when his wife announced that she was taking his four children-and moving in with her parents some 350 miles away-he took the money! And ran! In his flight, Paul was intercepted by an angel-spokesman for a small group of heavenly beings! The angel offered to give him a new body, a new voice, a new name-and to set him up in a beautiful condo, on the beautiful Pacific Ocean beach, in beautiful Oregon. More than a thousand miles from his untenable situation. There was just one highly problematic difficulty: the "celestial deal" consisted of those few angels faking Paul's death! He'd turn up as having died in an automobile crash! Truly, this would be a brand-new beginning! The troubled man accepted! It was only after he had become the younger-and far more handsome- Taylor Young, that he begins worrying about those he'd left behind! His "widow" ran off with some "snake oil" salesman, who won her over with a few lavish gifts. She joined a cult! That left the children-all of whom Paul/Taylor missed terribly-in the hands of their grandparents. Grandma was dangerously harried-and Grandpa hated having the responsibility of having to raise kids that were not his own! Further, there was another woman-one with whom Paul had had a romantic relationship. She was terribly upset by his "running out." She is completely shattered-to learn of his "death." Paul had also been close to her two children. None of this was helping! It was only after he'd assumed his new lifestyle that the now-Taylor slowly learned of the many and varied difficulties confronting all these people from his past. The ones he'd left behind. Obviously, he became more and more concerned about them! So he strived to do something-to do whatever he can-about their troubling circumstances. The effect that his sudden journey back to Texas had on the two women-with whom he'd formed a relationship in Oregon-only added to his rapidly accumulating difficulties. Trust me! A "new beginning" is not always what it would seem to be!

“A documentary filmmaker and daughter of the late, great New York Times columnist David Carr celebrates and wrestles with her father’s legacy in a raw, redemptive memoir.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “A breathtaking read . . . a testimony equal parts love and candor. David would have had it no other way.”—Ta-Nehisi Coates, bestselling author of Between the World and Me NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY GLAMOUR AND MARIE CLAIRE Dad: What will set you apart is not talent but will and a certain kind of humility. A willingness to let the world show you things that you play back as you grow as an artist. Talent is cheap. Me: OK I will ponder these things. I am a Carr. Dad: That should matter quite a bit, actually not the name but the guts of what that name means. A celebrated journalist, bestselling author (The Night of the Gun), and recovering addict, David Carr was in the prime of his career when he suffered a fatal collapse in the newsroom of The New York Times in 2015. Shattered by his death, his daughter Erin Lee Carr, at age twenty-seven an up-and-coming documentary filmmaker, began combing through the entirety of their shared correspondence—1,936 items in total—in search of comfort and support. What started as an exercise in grief quickly grew into an active investigation: Did her father’s writings contain the answers to the question of how to move forward in life and work without her biggest champion by her side? How could she fill the space left behind by a man who had come to embody journalistic integrity, rigor, and hard reporting, whose mentorship meant everything not just to her but to the many who served alongside him? All That You Leave Behind is a poignant coming-of-age story that offers a raw and honest glimpse into the multilayered relationship between a daughter and a father. Through this lens, Erin comes to understand her own workplace missteps, existential crises, and relationship fails. While daughter and father bond over their mutual addictions and challenges with sobriety, it is their powerful sense of work and family that comes to ultimately define them. This unique combination of Erin Lee Carr’s earnest prose and her father’s meaningful words offers a compelling read that shows us what it means to be vulnerable and lost, supported and found. It is a window into love, with all of its fierceness and frustrations. “Thank you, Erin, for this beautiful book. Now I am going to steal all of your father’s remarkable advice and tell my kids I thought of it.”—Judd Apatow

Shortlisted for the New Brunswick Book Award for Fiction A novel of absence and adolescence by the author of the award-winning The Town That Drowned. It's 1977. Seventeen-year-old Violet is left behind by her parents to manage their busy roadside antique stand for the summer. Her restless older brother, Bliss, has disappeared, leaving home without warning, and her parents are off searching for clues. Violet is haunted by her brother's absence while trying to cope with her new responsibilities. Between visiting a local hermit, who makes twig furniture for the shop, and finding a way to land the contents of the mysterious Vaughan estate, Violet acts out with her summer boyfriend, Dean, and wonders about the mysterious boneyard. But what really keeps her up at night are thoughts of Bliss's departure and the white deer, which only she has seen. All the Things We Leave Behind is about remembrance and attachment, about what we collect and what we leave behind. In this highly affecting novel, Nason explores the permeability of memory and the sometimes confusing bonds of human emotion.

What We Leave Behind is a piercing, impassioned guide to living a truly responsible life on earth. Human waste, once considered a gift to the soil, has become toxic material that has broken the essential cycle of decay and regeneration. Here, award-winning author Derrick Jensen and activist Aric McBay weave historical analysis and devastatingly beautiful prose to remind us that life—human and nonhuman—will not go on unless we do everything we can to facilitate the most basic process on earth, the root of sustainability: one being's waste must always become another being’s food.

"The Lines We Leave Behind is mesmerizing; a deeply affecting story of treachery, deception, sacrifice, and loss. Beautifully written and completely absorbing..." --Karen Dionne, author of the internationally bestselling The Marsh King's Daughter England, 1947: A young woman finds herself under close observation in an insane asylum, charged with a violent crime she has no memory of committing. As she tries to make sense of her recent past, she recalls very little. But she still remembers wartime in Yugoslavia. There she and her lover risked everything to carry out dangerous work resisting the Germans--a heroic campaign in which many brave comrades were lost. After that, the trail disappears into confusion. How did she come to be trapped in a living nightmare? As she struggles to piece together the missing years of her life, she will have to confront the harrowing experiences of her special-operations work and peacetime marriage. Only then can she hope to regain the vital memories that will uncover the truth: is she really a violent criminal...or was she betrayed?

Jessica Verdi, the author of My Life After Now and The Summer I Wasn't Me, returns with a heartbreaking and poignant novel of grief and guilt that reads like Nicholas Sparks for teens. It's all Ryden's fault. If he hadn't gotten Meg pregnant, she would have never stopped her chemo treatments and would still be alive. Instead he's failing fatherhood one dirty diaper at a time. And it's not like he's had time to grieve while struggling to care for their infant daughter, start his senior year, and earn the soccer scholarship he needs to go to college. The one person who makes Ryden feel like his old self is Joni. She's fun and energetic-and doesn't know he has a baby. But the more time they spend together, the harder it becomes to keep his two worlds separate. Finding one of Meg's journals only stirs up old emotions. Ryden's convinced Meg left other notebooks for him to find, some message to help his new life make sense. But how is he going to have a future if he can't let go of the past? "Ryden's story is a moving illustration of how sometimes you have to let go of the life you planned to embrace the life you've been given. A strong, character-driven story that teen readers will love."-Carrie Arcos, National Book Award Finalist for Out of Reach