“Her mother drank, her father went off his head in a way that made newspaper headlines, and four-year-old Amy Turner was left to pick up the pieces. Years later, after a devastating accident of her own, she begins to fit the shards of her upbringing together into an evocative portrait of a family whose secrets nearly buried them all. On the Ledge is sad, funny, wise, and lit with grace.”
—TAD FRIEND | author of In the Early Times
“On the Ledge is an extraordinary memoir of the way trauma harms both body and soul. Amy Turner’s near-miss with death at the age of fifty-seven propels her on a journey back through family history, leading to a new understanding of how her father’s attempted suicide and her mother’s determination to ‘move on’ has shaped—and limited—her since the age of four. Inspirational and beautifully told.”
—SUSAN SCARF MERRELL | author of Shirley: A Novel, now a major motion picture
“In her strong, gracious memoir, On the Ledge, Amy Turner deftly explores anxiety’s pernicious cruelty. The flashes of insight into the toll that anxiety takes on the human spirit are never self-pitying, but constantly poignant and revealing.”
—LOU ANN WALKER | author of A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family
“In lyrical and vivid prose, Amy Turner reckons with her family secrets and how they dug their roots deep into her psyche. With trauma as the inciting force, Turner courageously comes to terms with her past and present, showing us how choosing to lean into the scars can reveal paths forward. On the Ledge is a compelling read, told with grace, vulnerability, and depth.”
—RACHEL MICHELBERG | author of Crash, How I Became a Reluctant Caregiver
“Amy Turner artfully weaves the effects of her own near tragedy—she was run over by a truck, literally—into her life-long search for the truth behind the very public rescue of her father from his precarious perch on the fifty-foot high ledge of his hotel window. Through it all, her writing sparkles with insight, wit, self-deprecating humor, and subtle understatement. So skilled and honest is her prose, that I felt myself no longer a mere reader, but a kindred soul in her struggles.”
—TERRY MARSHALL | co-author of A Rendezvous to Remember
“Absorbing, direct, humorous, horrific, On the Ledge explores the edge of madness as an artful memoir that also addresses two growing contemporary concerns: suicide and addiction. Timely, significant, well written, this is a courageous and engaging account, neither didactic nor sentimental, that belongs on school shelves as well as in the home.”
—JOAN BAUM | Host of “Baum on Books” on NPR