Lisette Rimer supports her son's gay life. She is in awe of his achievements. Patrick Wood is a valedictorian, an AP Scholar, and a National Merit Scholarship winner with perfect SAT scores. A year after graduating from Stanford with honors in 2005, he plugs every opening in a small room and lights charcoal. He is twenty-three years old. Rimer tracks her desperate need to understand his death through suicide research, memoirs, and media -- anything to find answers. She traces Patrick's depression through years of therapy, medication, and hospitalization at Stanford, none of which assuage his perfectionism and self-doubt.

Back from Suicidereveals the suicidal mind through the misery of depression and the difficulty of coming out. It's about the enigma of self-destruction after a lifetime of success. It is a mother's pursuit of the biggest question of humankind -- why do people kill themselves? Rimer learns what she should have done, what she should have said, what parents need to know, and, in spite of mistakes, how she emerged Back from Suicide.

"He would teach me something I never thought possible. He would teach me there was something worse than death. It was the fear of not dying. It was called depression." -Marie Lisette Rimer, Back from Suicide

PRAISE FOR BACK FROM SUICIDE
"Back from Suicide is a must-read for everyone, at this moment of our sad history, when teenage suicide is on the rise. I did not put it down, except to eat and sleep." -Nancy Cobb, In Lieu of Flowers: A Conversation for the Living

"Back from Suicide is heart-rending and saddening, but it is at the same time a reflective celebration of Patrick. It is precise, real, succinct and thereby all the more expressive-a work of insight and clarity, compassion that does not err on the side of over expression." -Karen Kramer, Ph.D., Director, Stanford Program in Berlin, Academia. Exzellenz hat ihren Preis

"How does one pay tribute to a brilliant life that ends far too soon? This gripping book sets out to do just that and, as well, catalog the protracted, difficult attempt at peacemaking that follows the loss of a child to suicide." -Brad Davis, Short List of Wonders, Sunken Garden Poetry winner
"Back from Suicide packs several gut punches and made me cry. It's a testament to the heart and soul Rimer poured into more than 15 years of trying to make sense of something so senseless." -James Hohmann, columnist, The Washington Post

"Rimer's deeply pained and beautifully written exploration of her son's death from suicide, is at once a celebration of a life, a reckoning with a death, and an impassioned inquiry in how and why the inconceivable could happen." -BookLife Reviews

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• Biographies & MemoirsMemoirs

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• Print Length: 387 Pages
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