Now You See the Sky
"Murray's lucid meditations and living-in-the-moment attitude -- e.g., providing simple pleasures like a favorite food to a sick child -- serve as useful reminders to all of us that life is precious and fleeting and must be enjoyed to the fullest. It's a simple message but an important one. As much a eulogy to Chan as a testament to the joy of life, the book is a heartwarming tale of dealing with life-altering loss . . . A tender, love-filled story of how one woman dealt with the loss of a young child." --Kirkus Reviews
"An extraordinary memoir. Forthright, honest and haunting . . . Murray's memoir is wise and enlightened." --Portland Press Herald
Now You See the Sky is a memoir about love, motherhood, and loss. When Catharine H. Murray travels to a small town on the banks of the Mekong River to work at a refugee camp, she falls in love and marries a local man with whom she has three sons. When their middle son is diagnosed with cancer at age five, their pursuit of a cure takes them from Thailand to Seattle, before they eventually return to Thailand, settling on a remote mountaintop. Full of honesty and grace, Now You See the Sky -- the debut selection in Ann Hood's new Gracie Belle imprint -- allows the reader to witness the fathomless loss of a child and learn how tragedy can transform us, expand our vision, and make us more fully alive.
Now You See the Sky is the debut selection of Ann Hood's new nonfiction imprint with Akashic, Gracie Belle. Modeled after her experience writing the memoir Comfort: A Journey Through Grief, and named after her daughter, Grace, Hood's imprint reaffirms for authors and readers that none of us is alone in our journeys.
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Catharine H. Murray lives with her two sons in Portland, Maine, where she teaches English to refugees and leads workshops on grief writing. She has read at Harvard University, Maine Medical Center, University of New England, and Maine State Prison. Murray earned her MFA at the Stonecoast Writing Program at the University of Southern Maine, where she was the creative nonfiction editor of the Stonecoast Review. Now You See the Sky is her first book.
Now You See the Sky is so real, so tender and so painful that its impact will be felt long after the last page . . . It must have been very difficult for Murray to tell this story, so personal yet so necessary, but she writes with such honesty and clarity, sure to evoke strong reader reactions.-- "Kennebec Journal"
A gorgeously written memoir that burrows deep into the heart.
-- "Brevity Magazine"
