Disaster Falls: A Family Story by Stephane Gerson both is and isn't the horror story its title and cover design seem to portend. (One wonders if that was the reason for the subtitle in the first place.) Though there is no murderer rampant in the woods, which was the first mental image conjured up by those two elements, there is death in the form of Gerson's eight-year-old son Owen drowning in a tragic rafting accident. Disaster Falls is a memoir of Gerson's grief, and of how his family (himself, his wife Alison, and their older son Julian) deal with this traumatic event--both together and separately.
What makes Disaster Falls so different from countless other memoirs written by parents whose children have died young? Surely, each one is tragic. Each story is incomprehensible. Each is terrible to behold, even from the far-removed perspective of a reader who has never met the author and never knew the child. But it is Gerson's precision of language and utter thoughtfulness about how he describes his family's experiences with grief and loss that set him apart.
Perhaps one of the most helpful sections of the book for those readers not seeking solace in a tale to which we can relate is the one in which Gerson lists quotations from condolence messages his family received in the aftermath. He breaks them down into categories of what made him feel better, what made him feel worse... what bothered him, what was offensive. Even if there is no takeaway value in any of the ensuing pages (and there is actually much), hearing an honest reaction firsthand from someone who heard such condolence messages about what thoughts and feelings they inspired is helpful. After all, there is nothing so difficult to write as a condolence message, and wouldn't we all like to know how to be truly comforting, as opposed to ineffectual or, worse, hurtful?
Another aspect of Disaster Falls that sets it apart from other books of its type is the way Gerson has uncovered heretofore unpublicized information about the type of rafting trips (marketed to families, even with children as young as eight, which was Owen's age at the time of the fatal accident) that killed Owen. Gerson has done more than reflect on his feelings--he has done enough due diligence for any parent who might be reading Disaster Falls. Gerson uncovers the unpalatable truth about such tourist enterprises, speaking from a position of painful personal regret. If someone had only been honest and upfront with him and his wife about the risks associated with these trips, then maybe Owen would still be inching his way toward adulthood as part of the Gerson family, alive and well.
Gerson deftly illustrates the differences in how individuals grieve. Even three people as close as he, his wife, and his surviving son are experienced the sudden absence of the same cherished boy in starkly different ways. Alison was comforted by a house full of people, while Julian expressed no greater desire than for the interlopers to leave. Gerson found himself frozen into inaction while he watched his wife run circles around him, barely eating, and losing pounds by the dozens.
Ultimately, Disaster Falls does many things well, at what I assume was great personal cost to the author. It tells the story of how the Gerson family responded to a horrible event. It takes unscrupulous tourist rafting companies to task for their role in Owen's demise. It alerts other parents to the often unspoken dangers of rafting trips marketed for families. It highlights how differently grief for the same person can manifest itself, even among members of the same immediate family. It presents (poetically, eloquently) the terrible reality of what it feels like to a parent when his or her child dies.
Highly recommended.
A free copy of this book was provided through Blogging For Books in exchange for my honest review.
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