2023 Firebird Book Awards First Place Winner in Memoir, Mental Health, New Nonfiction, Nonfiction, and Trauma/Trauma Recovery
2023 Firebird Book Awards Second Place Winner in Mind, Body, Spirit
“. . . a refreshing, engaging, entertaining debut with a thread of hope woven throughout that echoes at the end.”
—Dorothy Rice, Storycircle Book Reviews
“. . . an intriguing memoir . . . that many readers will find relatable. . . . A frank and engaging portrait of one family’s struggles with mental illness.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“This remarkable story of a woman's journey toward healing after a random, shocking accident takes us back in time into the home of an unusual family and the seminal event that shaped them all. In peeling back layers of trauma and revisiting key moments from her past, Turner comes to a new understanding of what it means to be a daughter, a mother, a woman, and a seeker of truth. This is a riveting story of courage and redemption. And dare I say that parts of it are very, very funny?”
—Hope Edelman, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Motherless Daughters and The AfterGrief
“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
“Amy Turner has laid bare her own life, and that of her family, in ways that are alternately heartbreaking, poignant, and transcendent. With a novelist’s skill in terms of interweaving time and theme, and with breathtaking prose, she viscerally conveys the legacy of shame, silence, and grit that comprises her journey to ultimate understanding, forgiveness, and self-revelation. A must-read for anyone interested in families, mental health, and sheer humanity.”
—Stephen P. Hinshaw, professor and author of Another Kind of Madness: A Journey through the Stigma and Hope of Mental Illness
“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 lifelong 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, coauthor 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 NPR’s Baum on Books
“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
2022-05-18
Turner, an educator and former attorney, offers a debut memoir about searching for clarity amid anxiety.
In 2010, Turner was hit by a pickup truck when crossing a street in East Hampton, New York, resulting in a concussion and other injuries to her shoulder and back. On the resultant road to recovery she paid visits to a helpful acupuncturist and tried to cope at work, teaching classes despite dizziness and pain. Along the way, she found herself delving into an event in her family’s past that occurred when she was 4 years old and that significantly shaped her life. In 1957, in New Haven, Connecticut, Turner’s father, who suffered from deep depression, threatened to jump off a hotel window ledge but was talked out of it by a kind priest. Turner’s narrative moves back and forth between her own accident and her father’s near suicide as she seeks to understand and make peace with her relationship to mental illness. What results is an intriguing memoir that’s not one of self-pity—a topic she addresses in a story about her own mother—but one of self-discovery that many readers will find relatable. For example, Turner tracks her anxiety back to her earliest memories, when she and her three siblings were warned to never upset their father. Throughout the work, she effectively paints a vibrant picture of her family; her father was an aspiring writer and her mother, a giftedamateur tennis player, and both were political activists. Their stories shine as Turner shows their journeys as being intertwined with her own.
A frank and engaging portrait of one family’s struggles with mental illness.
