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    Disaster Falls: A Family Story
    Disaster Falls: A Family Story
    Disaster Falls: A Family Story
    Audiobook8 hours

    Disaster Falls: A Family Story

    Written by Stephane Gerson

    Narrated by Will Damron

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    On a day like any other, on a rafting trip down Utah's Green River, Stephane Gerson's eight-year-old son, Owen, drowned in a spot known as Disaster Falls. That same night, as darkness fell, Stephane huddled in a tent with his wife, Alison, and their older son, Julian, trying to understand what seemed inconceivable. "It's just the three of us now," Alison said over the sounds of a light rain and, nearby, the rushing river. "We cannot do it alone. We have to stick together."

    Disaster Falls chronicles the aftermath of that day and their shared determination to stay true to Alison's resolution. Gerson captures the different ways of grieving that threatened to isolate each of them in their post-Owen worlds and then, with beautiful specificity, shows how he and Alison preserved and reconfigured their marriage from within. Blending family history (including the "good death" of his father, which offers a very different perspective on mortality) and the natural history of the river, he provides an expansive, unflinching meditation on loss, our responsibilities toward our children, and the stories we tell ourselves in the wake of traumatic events.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJan 24, 2017
    ISBN9781515980278
    Disaster Falls: A Family Story

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    Reviews for Disaster Falls

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Disaster Falls by Stéphane Gerson is an exceptional memoir of lass, grief, and a family trying desperately to come to terms with the loss of their eight year old. Disaster Falls is exceedingly well written and one I would recommend to those who enjoy memoirs and to book discussion groups as there is quite a lot to mull over.
    • 4/5
      I received this book as an Early Reviewer. I have to say I didn't initially realize it wasn't fiction, and that made the subject matter a little more difficult. Gerson has a heartbreaking tale of life before and after losing a young child in a rafting accident. It brought tears to my eyes many times, and I'm not even a parent yet. I can see how this would be too difficult or not a go-to choice for a lot of readers, but if you're interested in stories about the range of human experiences and emotions, even sad and terrible ones, then it's a good read.
    • 4/5
      Come along with the author as he takes you on a journey of grief, tragedy, and mourning. On a family rafting vacation in Utah, the youngest member of the Gerson family, Owen, was swept away by the river and drowned. This book is the father's attempt to understand and cope with the accident, his culpability, and his struggle to go on living. Together with his wife and remaining son, Stephane seeks to remember Owen while letting him go. A very intimate and moving story about death and it's place in life.
    • 4/5
      This is such a tragedy. To lose your 8-year-old son on vacation while rafting and later finding out it could have been prevented if the rafting company cared more about safety than profit is heartbreaking. This family learned how to go forward and live without their son in the physical world when tragedy can pull a family apart.
    • 5/5
      There is no owner’s manual for grief. Stéphane Gerson calmly shares the story of his family during the five years following the accidental death of an eight year old child. Parts of this book are tough to read. Sometimes I had to put it down. But after starting the book, I needed to know how this family had moved forward, coping with the unimaginable. The description of the accident itself unfolds as does memory, in flashbacks and remembered premonitions, second thoughts and comforts, clinical facts and suppositions. It nestles amidst the story of a family of four, suddenly a family of three, struggling to make sense of how to go on with their lives individually and, by conscious agreement, together. Some of what happened after Owen’s death was predictable, some unexpected and seemingly odd - until the reader remembers that each parent, sibling, classmate, and friend experienced this loss in a unique way.
    • 4/5
      As I lost a child, the book was very sad for me. It was very hard and personal to me of the reality of death that we are unprepared for in our life.It was a very honest look at the family and their mourning the loss of the son. This real story of their next few years was very honest look at the family. This was an actual story.
    • 4/5
      Is there anything more devastating than the death of a child? It is an inversion of the universe, a shattering of the heart, an unrepairable rip in the fabric of life. For Stephane Gerson and his family, it became a terrible reality when 8 year old Owen drowned on a family rafting vacation. And this memoir is one of the ways in which Gerson not only acknowledged their huge loss but a way that allowed him to finally look more closely at what happened that day, to understand and to accept.When you plan a vacation with your two young children, you would never imagine that your family of four would be a family of three before it is over. The Gersons, father Stephane, mother Alison, oldest son Julian, and youngest son Owen couldn't have either. Their vacation was supposed to be safe for families with children, a rafting trip on the Green River in Utah. But they left New York as four and returned home as three, Owen having drowned at the spot known as Disaster Falls. Gerson chronicles his overwhelming grief at losing Owen as well as the different journeys that Alison and Julian also took through the days, weeks, months, and years after Owen's death. He speaks of the isolation of sorrow, the pain and anguish, his guilt over what happened that day, and the shocked huddle of a family violently rent apart in this emotionally devastating memoir.The non-linear time line jumps from the rawness of immediately after the accident to what led up to it and back again as the family learns to negotiate life after Owen. The whole of how Owen died isn't fully presented until well into the book, Gerson coming close to it before shutting down the remembrance many times, only telling the whole of it when he feels he's capable and strong enough to look at it. The story is heart rending and the reader can feel the ache and the searching in the haunting writing even years after Owen's death. The book is clearly a way for Gerson to honor his son and his memory of his son, to mourn the loss not only of the boy that he was, but also the whole of the imagined life he never had a chance to live. There are repetitions here but they so closely echo the stunned and frozen rehashing of what happened, the what ifs, and the if onlys that they seem entirely fitting. Not easy to read, this is a thoughtful, introspective, quite beautiful look at a family and a father going on forever changed by their shared loss for those readers who don't mind being emotionally wrung out at the end of a book.
    • 4/5
      This is not a book I would have normally picked to read. However, I received it through the Early Reviewers program. I read it in two days. The pain this father went through in losing a child was very compelling. I appreciated how he discussed the different ways he grieved as compared to his wife. Not a cheerful topic, but a book that kept my interest.
    • 5/5
      The double entendre title gives notice of Gerson’s abilities describing what a family goes through dealing with gut wrenching, heart pounding, fear-inducing loss. Quickly, not only do we begin to understand the loss itself, but we see the suffering of the extended family, friends, co-workers, people who in their kindest of intentions, can still get it all wrong, and occasionally get it right. When dealing with such a bereavement, you feel it as only it affects you. You see others struggling but that amounts to nothing compared to the pain, guilt and regret in your mind. Gerson relates a terribly sad story and manages to tell the world, that life goes on. Life is different. Life will never be the same and that ultimately, life is change. A beautifully told “family story.”This book was provided gratis in return for an honest review.
    • 4/5
      This memoir details the loss of son and the aftermath associated with the loss. The work is very readable but is emotionally challenging, as it no doubt should be. Though I ended up having to read it in smaller doses, I highly recommend this book.
    • 4/5
      Sad from beginning to end, but a great read. Goes through the processing of the sudden death of a child.
    • 5/5
      In this heart-wrenching memoir, Gerson works through the grief caused by the death of his son. His memoir resembles the journal he kept after his son’s death. He shifts topics, skirting the actual day of the accident until later in the book, replicating his aversion to thinking about the accident until he’s ready to revisit it. He also discusses his own coping mechanisms and those of his wife and surviving son. On the night of the accident, when the family was forced to camp overnight next to the river that had taken their son’s life, his wife makes a vow to move forward and not live in the past. While this wasn’t always possible for them, Gerson and his wife do move forward together, never letting their own anger and grief destroy them. They each find a way to cope with their son’s death and not lose each other in the process. When, a few years later, Gerson’s father dies after a battle with cancer, he’s better able to reconcile his relationship with his father and the one he was never able to have with his son.
    • 5/5
      A haunting account of a man trying to make sense of the death of his eight-year-old son who was drowned in a boating accident.A couple and their two sons took a float trip on Utah’s Green River. They knew little about running rivers or the American west, but the trip was said to be safe for children. The unthinkable happened. Their younger son drowned in the rapids. Over the next three years, the boy’s father struggled to make sense of what had taken place as the family tried to move on. This book is his narrative of that struggle.Stephane Gerson is a cultural historian who teaches at New York University. Cultural historians are an emerging subset of historians who focus on understanding cultural adaptations and how they change. In his prize-winning scholarly work, Gerson has focused on topics like memories and geographical place. For example, he has looked at the impact of tumultuous events like the French Revolution on individuals and culture rather than its concrete political affect. Unlike traditional intellectual historians who have studied “great men and great ideas,” cultural historians look at the attitudes that pervade groups of people. They are sensitive to the stories that people construct to explain their lives. They are aware that such stories may differ widely and be contradictory. Instead of absolute factual accuracy, they are interested in the shape and textures of the stories. Gerson’s account of accepting his son’s death grows out of the assumptions of his field, although he shuns the jargon that too often makes cultural history difficult to read.What happened to eight-year-old Owen was incomprehensible to his father, and Gerson needed to find a means of coping with it. Although he had no hope that would find a definite answer to his literal or metaphysical questions, his response was to write, to craft words that could allow him to negotiate the path ahead. At first he wrote in his journal and later he composed this book.Gerson writes with skill and insight. He brings readers into his numbness and sense of isolation without becoming voyeuristic or smothering them in his emotions. He is fully aware of what words can and cannot do. Deliberately refusing to get caught up in anger and blame, he experiences deep guilt as a parent who failed at any parent’s chief task, keeping his child safe. Because he wants to honor and remember his son, he continues to look for the words to express the unthinkable.As Gerson makes clear, he has not written an advice book but an account of his own introspective journey. His wife and his surviving son took different paths, but the family deliberately decided not to allow the tragedy to destroy their family bonds. Theirs was a Jewish family, but not a particularly observant one. At times traditional Jewish words and practices resonated, but family did not find a solution to their grief in religion. Gerson’s parents had escaped Nazi Germany and continued to live in Belgium. After Owen’s death, Gerson pondered his own identity as both a father and a son. His father’s death, three years after Owen’s, brought him a sense of his ongoing relationship to both.Disaster Falls is the name of the book and the place where Owen died. It also identifies the devastating loss of meaning that can occur in our lives. As such I recommend this book to all who are dealing such losses themselves. Reading Gerson can provide a sense that those who grieve are not as alone as they often feel. Another person has been through the darkness been able to find words for it, inadequate as they may be. The book also can provide insight and permission to follow one’s path because there is no one required way to grieve.In addition, Gerson offers an example what it means to “construct our own stories.” Such an idea is commonplace among some academics, but some within and without academia, find it disturbing and overly relativistic. Gerson displays how stories are not simply things we “make up” but can be grounded in the objective physical realities of life. The fact Owen died is about as real as anything can be. So are the swirling contradictions that Gerson experiences. The story is literally a way to bring order to what is unthinkable. The story does not claim to be perfectly objectively true, although it must include that sort of truth. It is not the only valid story; other valid stories can be told from other perspectives. The story’s power is that an acceptable narrative can allow us to survive extreme loss. As my nation moves into an unthinkable future, I long for words to make bearable. Perhaps we all need to find new stories to deal with our new realities.I sincerely recommend this book to a variety of readers who are curious about creating stories that face reality and steady us as we live through turbulent times.
    • 2/5
      A book dealing with the sudden death of their child on a rafting vacation in Utah and the aftermath of that tragedy. The father withdraws and blames himself sometimes but decides to write something every day in a journal about his son. The mother tries to just keep busy and not think about it. The first year is the hardest but gradually over time they learn to cope with their loss and bring a new life into the world.
    • 2/5
      I cannot imagine every losing a child and having the strength to write a memoir about the death of a child. However, I wasn't as impressed with this memoir. I understand that we all grieve in different manner and fashions, but does that mean this family should get a metal for staying together,.or eventually have a another child to help heal. I feel as if that's what most ponder in a situation like this. The story jumped from time back and forth,and I could keep up, but was exhausted trying to do so in understanding the grief and guilt while trying to hear of how the death occurred. I'm glad they were able to find some semblance of peace and carry on, the story just felt a little flat.
    • 4/5
      A heart-wrenching memoir of loss, grief, guilt, and pain as a father re-counts the tragedy of losing his eight year old son. What was supposed to be a fun family trip soon turned into a nightmare when their youngest son drowned while kayaking on the Green River. Almost numb with pain, the author recounts with clarifying and insightful detail the emotions (or sometimes lack thereof) experienced by him, his wife, and their only remaining child. Spanning over the course of a few years, this memoir is a glimpse into the tragedy that many families experience everyday. A wonderful, but heart breaking memoir that beneficial for everyone to read. Not everyone experiences grief the same way and reading this will help readers with that cold hard fact.
    • 5/5
      This is an important book. The author has carefully and thoughtfully examined the ramifications of his family's terrible, tragic loss, and has written a book which reveals much about human nature. This is a serious work, not a fun book. My advice to you: read it!
    • 4/5
      This one ties into my reading about end of life since the author talks about the death of his father later in the book. A 10 month decline from cancer and having assisted suicide be legal in Belgium led his father to a much different death than experienced by the author's son, Owen. Owen fell out of a raft on a river trip and drowned at 8 years old. This book records the way Gerson comes to terms with his son's death, talking about the first and second years in detail, but circling around the circumstances of the death a lot. I can see how it was super hard to face, but as a reader I'd have preferred to have at least the medium level details of how the accident happened, beyond what I summarised above. It's a compelling read though, raw and honest, written in consultation with his wife who grieved in a totally different way. I half suspected at points that Lin Manuel Miranda had read a copy of this before writing certain songs in Hamilton, but maybe it's just that the experience of losing a son is somewhat universal for fathers. One quote that stood out to me:[...] were subjected to forms of risk they did not comprehend because these risks were not made comprehensible.The rafting company was letting the paying guests make their own calls on if and how they would run the rapids, yet didn't make sure that the guests had the necessary information to make a solid estimate of the risks involved.
    • 3/5
      I don't know why I thought this was a novel up until I started reading it, but that's neither here nor there, I suppose. This is a bit of a rough read, but it does read like grief feels - disjointed, bouncing from place to place and thought to thought with no linear or logical explanation. To my surprise, in a book about the death of a young son, the part that got to me more was the death of Gerson's father. Perhaps it was the ability to finally say things that had troubled him, or the fact that he was actually able to say goodbye, or the dignity with which Berl was able to choose his end. Perhaps it was that this section contained the most selfishly affecting passage to me - the discussion of Julian now having to make end-of-life decisions for Gerson and his wife alone. As a person who has lost a sibling, I will always connect more with explorations and depictions of that loss and those few sentences that touched on something I've had to recognize myself were quietly moving.I received this book as part of LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.
    • 5/5
      How does a family go on after the loss of a child? This book tells of the aftermath of such a tragic event. Author Stephane Gerson tells this story in heart-breaking beautiful language. Writing skill and compassion resonate on every page. This is an artful and touching work by an exceptional writer.The subject matter is obviously extremely sad, but it is not a story to miss. Ir will be well worth your tears.
    • 2/5
      Disaster Falls is the memoir of a father who loses his son in a tragic rafting accident. It is terribly sad, absolutely heartbreaking, and emotionally difficult to read about his grief. I'm not sure who the target audience would be for this book, but I can't recommend it. I just didn't like it. The author writes well enough, but the story was sometimes scattered and disjointed. I found it difficult to follow at times. It's such a sad subject matter, I did not want to finish the book.
    • 4/5
      A detailed account of an affluent family's devastating loss of their youngest (of two) sons, the result of white-water rafting. It is a well written, intelligent book about a family drafted by fate into a heartbreaking reality. We all hope to stay clear of living longer than our children, but it's such a random thing, and who you are or aren't seems to have no bearing,, much like the accident itself.
    • 3/5
      On a trip from their home in upstate New York to the Green River in Utah, a family of four decides to rough it on an adventure outing. The parents and two boys, ages 8 and 10, enjoy camping, rafting and being outdoors. Until one afternoon the rapids become more urgent than the family expected, and tragedy strikes. Eight-year-old Owen is ejected from the "duckie" that he and his father are manning into the river. Due to the action and danger of the river, Owen's father does not immediately realize Owen has been thrown overboard. By the time he realizes it and is able to alert the guides, Owen has been missing for a while. This story does not end well.After Owen's death, the family returns to New York and tries to move on with their lives. Each family member deals in their own way. They try to deal with the tragedy together, although not always successfully. They do, however, keep their pact to stay together rather than let this awful tragedy tear them apart. Owen's father, a writer and historian begins writing a book about the event of Owen's death and the aftermath on him, personally, and on Owen's mother and Julian, Owen's brother. He frequently refers to famous authors who wrote about losing their children, and things they published about their loss. He also ties Owen's death to the loss of his own father a few years later, relating how opposite yet similar they were. He talks about the platitudes they hear from friends, family, strangers, how everyone says they cannot even begin to imagine the family's pain, and how true he finds some things, how annoying he finds other things. I really hope the author found writing this book to be therapeutic. I can't imagine why anyone would choose to share something so personal and awful otherwise. I won this book via Library Thing.
    • 4/5
      For full disclosure, I received a copy of Stephane Gerson's "Disaster Falls" from LT's Early Reviewers program. The memoir is the story of the loss of Gerson's son Owen, who died tragically at the age of 8 in a rafting accident on Utah's Green River. Reading the book was painful, as Gerson's grief is so palpable it overwhelms him. He relieves every decision his family and others made on the day Owen died, knowing that different choices would likely have meant their son would still be alive today.Gerson does a good job detailing his family's struggle to deal with the loss of Owen. I never really got a very good sense of the kid Owen was -- Gerson describes him in a mass of contradictions -- perhaps because that's what 8-year-old boys are or perhaps because it was too painful to fill in that blank. I also didn't particularly enjoy the portions of the book that tried to draw parallels between Gerson's father's death and Owen's.I did think the book was well-written and I hope the Gerson family finds a measure of peace.
    • 4/5
      I received this as a an ARC and did not realize until I was a third of the way through that it was not a work of fiction. It is tough reading, but worth it. My son is exactly the age of the authors when tragedy strikes, so I felt connected with the author. It was nice to read of a family that stays together after the death of a child (sorry if that's a spoiler to anyone). Though the author doesn't want to find meaning in the terrible thing that happens to their family, I think that he eventually does - especially when it comes to dealing with his father and his father's family. Anyway, I enjoyed the book, as much as one can for this subject matter.
    • 4/5
      I received this book as an Early Reviewer. I have to say I didn't initially realize it wasn't fiction, and that made the subject matter a little more difficult. Gerson has a heartbreaking tale of life before and after losing a young child in a rafting accident. It brought tears to my eyes many times, and I'm not even a parent yet. I can see how this would be too difficult or not a go-to choice for a lot of readers, but if you're interested in stories about the range of human experiences and emotions, even sad and terrible ones, then it's a good read.
    • 3/5
      I have read a lot of memoirs over the years about a parent writing of the loss of a child. The child here is the author's eight year old son who dies in a river rafting accident. The book is so depressing as the author micro analyzes every single aspect from the incident itself to the several years afterwards as he, his wife and other son struggle to cope. If this story isn't enough the author takes a trip to Europe where he relives his families holocaust experience and then for good measure juxtaposes his son's quick death with several chapters regarding his dad's lengthy struggle and death from cancer. This was probably good therapy for the author but the only audience I see getting something out of the book are parents who just lost a child.
    • 4/5
      Losing my grandson at 8 years old, I found this difficult at first to read. But I did, and am glad I did because I got to see how a father would grieve such a tremendous loss. While on a family rafting trip, Owen was on his own raft and upset, drowning. With an older son, Julian, Alison, the mom, Stephane and Julian made a pledge to stick together and survive their grief. Each seemed isolated in their own different ways of grieving, but ultimately they were able to carry on. Re configuring their marriage, Stephane provides an expansive, unflinching meditation on loss, on responsibilities toward our children and the stories we tell ourselves inh the wake of traumatic events. This is an excellent book (memoir) to read and to consoling yourself to any traumatic event in your life.
    • 4/5
      When I requested this book, I am sure that I knew it was a memoir. But, by the time I received it, I had forgotten that part. I began thinking it was a sad story about the loss of a child but quickly realized it was not a story but truth. Gerson reveals the circumstances of the child's death slowly throughout the book and mixes that with details of what it is like to deal with such a tragedy. Although quite sad, the book was well written. It is interesting to see how husband, wife, and brother all deal with the tragedy in their separate and different ways.
    • 3/5
      I did not like this book. Not because it was not well written, it was. The reason why I did not like it is because it was so raw and emotional. Gerson writes an inteospective look at the death of his eight year old son. It is heart wrenching but the writing itself is incredible, putting the reader at the rapids with them.