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Praise for Risking the Rapids

“For many years now, the poet, playwright, and memoirist Irene O’Garden has been a hero to me. I think of her as a walking, writing, beam of light. It is my hope that…numberless others will come to know her gifts, and most of all, her captivating talent for wonder and marvel.”

—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic

“Risking the Rapids is a deep and powerful memoir. Irene O’Garden sifts through her family’s shared pain (and shared joy!) with elegance and care—searching for nothing less than ultimate understanding and supreme forgiveness.”

—Martha Beck, sociologist, life coach, bestselling author, columnist for O Magazine

“Set aside a goodly few hours with O’Garden’s enthralling memoir and plunge into the lives of a family that has chosen you as their new member. Here they are on horseback, immersed in rivers, on tops of mountains—camping, sleeping, quarreling, and forgiving … Risking the Rapids embraces our being and never lets go.”

—Malachy McCourt, author of Ireland and A Monk Swimming

“ ‘Family is landscape,’ writes Irene O’Garden in her breathtaking memoir, Risking the Rapids. She gives us a bold dose of both as she embarks on a remote river trip to help make sense of a family wild and dangerous. In her brave eloquence, O’Garden adds a thoroughly welcome voice to the rich vein of American literature on the singular healing powers of wilderness.”

—Florence Williams, author of The Nature Fix, LA Times Book Prize winner, and editor at Outside Magazine

“It is a tricky business, navigating the river of forgiveness while honoring the injured self. In that wilderness, the psyche must surrender to each boulder life smashes it against, and then it must stand in awe as we experience the changes wrought within our very DNA that are the gifts of facing down our demons; the gifts of looking our inner and outer truths square in the eye. O’Garden does this better than anyone I know and then puts it into words that have the cadence of angels.”

—Linda Ford Blaikie, CSW, psychotherapist, author of Godless Grace

“Irene O’Garden’s memoir is riveting, fiercely honest, and graced with poetic insight. An imaginative child plagued by insecurities, O’Garden vied with six siblings for her parents’ approval and lived beneath the Damoclean sword of Catholic doctrine. Her chronicle of growing up in what seemed then a normal Midwestern family in the 1950s and ’60s asks, ‘Who were we, really?’ in a far-ranging, haunting journey of discovery.”

—Victoria Riskin, former president, Writers Guild of America, West, author of Fay Wray and Robert Riskin: A Hollywood Memoir

“Irene O’Garden’s Risking the Rapids is, simply put, a literary triumph. Her roiling journey through the whitewater of big family turbulence is alternately a companionable sisterly punch in the shoulder and a vicious left hook to the jaw. And as is true for all superb writing, it is the ‘left hook’ that unexpectedly provides the narrator’s stunning—even transcendent—passage into calm waters and healing. Put aside whatever has gained your attention right now and read this book. O’Garden is truly a wonderful guide.”

—Steven Lewis, New York Times writer, Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute teacher, author of Loving Violet

“Risking the Rapids artfully peels back the layers of family to reveal both the darkness and the diamond. O’Garden lyrically shares the challenging circumstances of her Midwest Catholic childhood as a thread woven through a story of present-day danger during what is supposed to be a simple outing. The kaleidoscope effect of past and present, reflection and struggle, brings the reader along on a powerful healing journey to bring what is hidden into the light.”

—HeatherAsh Amara, author of Warrior Goddess Training

“I haven’t experienced this kind of reverberating tension and utter fascination with a family since Jeannette Walls’s memoir, The Glass Castle. Irene O’Garden’s long career of treasured work hits its highest note yet with her memoir. How she survived her upbringing in a big, dysfunctional Catholic family—and the harrowing wilderness trip through white waters she took as an adult with her family—is riveting and ultimately healing.”

—Debbie Phillips, author of Women on Fire: 20 Inspiring Women Share Their Life Secrets (and Save You Years of Struggle!)

“Irene O’Garden is, quite frankly, the most amazing writer I know. She’s a poet—just read her words aloud. She’s a storyteller—consider the arc of the tale she tells here. She’s a dramatist—we’re in that boat with her, risking the rapids, and hopefully rescuing our past self as she so magnificently succeeds in doing.”

—John Leonard Pielmeier, author of Hook’s Tale and Agnes of God

“Irene O’Garden’s Risking the Rapids is both a meditation and a thrill ride in which a sibling’s death prompts an unlikely family rafting journey through Montana’s wilderness. The beauty, moods, and menace of the swollen Flathead River seem an allegory of family life, and like sunlight glinting off water, her brutally honest reckoning is told in sparkling, luminous prose that gives memoir itself a fresh new shape.”

—Edward McCann, founder and editor, Read650.com

“Risking the Rapids is a sensitive depiction of a family’s attempt to heal. In the tradition of classic memoirs like The Glass Castle that highlight the coexistence of tortured love and unresolved misery, Irene O’Garden has captured the essence of family connections. With suspense and uncertainty about how complicated relationships unfold, this story intrigues and inspires us. I highly recommend this book to all of us who struggle with the legacies of abuse and with having the hopefulness to heal.”

—Sonya Rhodes, PhD, author and family therapist