Irene OGarden - Risking the rapids: how my wilderness adventure healed my childhood

Praise for Ris king the Rapids

For many years now, the poet, playwright, and memoirist Irene OGarden has been a hero to me. I think of her as a walking, writing, beam of light. It is my hope thatnumberless others will come to know her gifts, and most of all, her captivating talent for wonder an d marvel.

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic

Risking the Rapids is a deep and powerful memoir. Irene OGarden sifts through her familys shared pain (and shared joy!) with elegance and caresearching for nothing less than ultimate understanding and supreme for giveness.

Martha Beck, sociologist, life coach, bestselling author, columnist for O Magazine

Set aside a goodly few hours with OGardens enthralling memoir and plunge into the lives of a family that has chosen you as their new member. Here they are on horseback, immersed in rivers, on tops of mountainscamping, sleeping, quarreling, and forgiving Risking the Rapids embraces our being and never lets go.

Malachy McCourt, author of Ireland and A Mon k Swimming

Family is landscape, writes Irene OGarden in her breathtaking memoir, Risking the Rapids . She gives us a bold dose of both as she embarks on a remote river trip to help make sense of a family wild and dangerous. In her brave eloquence, OGarden adds a thoroughly welcome voice to the rich vein of American literature on the singular healing powers of wi lderness .

Florence Williams, author of The Nature Fix , LA Times Book Prize winner, and editor at Outsid e Magazine

It is a tricky business, navigating the river of forgiveness while honoring the injured self. In that wilderness, the psyche must surrender to each boulder life smashes it against, and then it must stand in awe as we experience the changes wrought within our very DNA that are the gifts of facing down our demons; the gifts of looking our inner and outer truths square in the eye. OGarden does this better than anyone I know and then puts it into words that have the cadence o f angels.

Linda Ford Blaikie, CSW, psychotherapist, author of God less Grace

Irene OGardens memoir is riveting, fiercely honest, and graced with poetic insight. An imaginative child plagued by insecurities, OGarden vied with six siblings for her parents approval and lived beneath the Damoclean sword of Catholic doctrine. Her chronicle of growing up in what seemed then a normal Midwestern family in the 1950s and 60s asks, Who were we, really? in a far-ranging, haunting journey of d iscovery.

Victoria Riskin, former president, Writers Guild of America, West, author of Fay Wray and Robert Riskin: A Hollyw ood Memoir

Irene OGardens Risking the Rapids is, simply put, a literary triumph. Her roiling journey through the whitewater of big family turbulence is alternately a companionable sisterly punch in the shoulder and a vicious left hook to the jaw. And as is true for all superb writing, it is the left hook that unexpectedly provides the narrators stunningeven transcendentpassage into calm waters and healing. Put aside whatever has gained your attention right now and read this book. OGarden is truly a wonderf ul guide.

Steven Lewis, New York Times writer, Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute teacher, author of Lov ing Violet

Risking the Rapids artfully peels back the layers of family to reveal both the darkness and the diamond. OGarden lyrically shares the challenging circumstances of her Midwest Catholic childhood as a thread woven through a story of present-day danger during what is supposed to be a simple outing. The kaleidoscope effect of past and present, reflection and struggle, brings the reader along on a powerful healing journey to bring what is hidden into t he light.

HeatherAsh Amara, author of Warrior Goddes s Training

I havent experienced this kind of reverberating tension and utter fascination with a family since Jeannette Wallss memoir, The Glass Castle . Irene OGardens long career of treasured work hits its highest note yet with her memoir. How she survived her upbringing in a big, dysfunctional Catholic familyand the harrowing wilderness trip through white waters she took as an adult with her familyis riveting and ultimately healing.

Debbie Phillips, author of Women on Fire: 20 Inspiring Women Share Their Life Secrets (and Save You Years of Struggle!)

Irene OGarden is, quite frankly, the most amazing writer I know. Shes a poetjust read her words aloud. Shes a storytellerconsider the arc of the tale she tells here. Shes a dramatistwere in that boat with her, risking the rapids, and hopefully rescuing our past self as she so magnificently succeeds in doing.

John Leonard Pielmeier, author of Hooks Tale and Ag nes of God

Irene OGardens Risking the Rapids is both a meditation and a thrill ride in which a siblings death prompts an unlikely family rafting journey through Montanas wilderness. The beauty, moods, and menace of the swollen Flathead River seem an allegory of family life, and like sunlight glinting off water, her brutally honest reckoning is told in sparkling, luminous prose that gives memoir itself a fresh n ew shape.

Edward McCann, founder and editor, R ead650.com

Risking the Rapids is a sensitive depiction of a familys attempt to heal. In the tradition of classic memoirs like The Glass Castle that highlight the coexistence of tortured love and unresolved misery, Irene OGarden has captured the essence of family connections. With suspense and uncertainty about how complicated relationships unfold, this story intrigues and inspires us. I highly recommend this book to all of us who struggle with the legacies of abuse and with having the hopefulness to heal.

Sonya Rhodes, PhD, author and family therapist

Praise for Irene OGardens Work

Bewitchingastoundingheart breaking.

The New York Times

An immersion into what we relish and how we live, a kind of shining beacon that doesnt shy away from the tough stuff Highly rec ommended.

Janet Pierson, Producer, SXSW Film Conference an d Festival

In a far-ranging and elegant suite of poems, Irene OGarden balances a galaxy of incommensurates on the fulcrum of a disciplined intelligence. I am a blueprint of a holy universe seesaws against I feel like a set of chinathe former in a Herbert-like sacred meditation, the latter in a narrative about being chased by a bull. Her technique suggests influences ranging from Donne to Bishop, from Frost to Moore. Soulful and rewarding, these poems remind us that Were not made of matter but of mat tering.

T.R. Hummer, whose poems appear in The New Yorker , Best of American Poetry , Harpers , Atlantic Monthly , Paris Review , and twelve volumes of his own

The poems in Irene OGardens book, Fulcrum , illustrate the importance and vitality of poetry in our daily lives. Beautiful imagery, powerful emotions, simplicity, complexity and thought-provoking subjectsall drawn from relatable life experiencesmake reading her work a journey of discovery and reflection focusing on what it means to live a life of passion and wonderment. Like the author herself, the poems in these pages inspire and draw one in. It is a beautiful co llection.

Professor Jane Kinney-Denning of Pace University, President of Womens National Book A ssociation

Risking

the

Rapids

Copyright 2019 Irene OGarden

Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc.

Cover: Morgane Leoni
Layout & Design: Roberto Nunez

Author photo: Mark Lacko
Picture of Jim and Irene with bottle: Ro OBrien
Photo of Irene leaning on sign: Ro OBrien
Photo of Ro and Irene: Mark Muenster

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