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Out of the Dark is a beautifully crafted memoir in third person, a choice of perspective that creates the same out-of-body distance for the reader that Jeanne feels as she is thrust into the dark reality of loss.
Devastated by the unspeakable loss of her only son, Jeanne, who represents author Marian Elliott, is pulled into a quagmire of grief, barely able to move. As her first summer of loss wanes, Jeanne’s husband convinces her to accept an invitation from friends to visit Toksook Bay, Alaska.
Bruised and broken with unresolved grief, she begins an ill-advised journey not realizing she would be driving out of her life as it always was with only a vague notion of where the road would take her and no idea what the future held in store. With winter in the wings and her beloved son’s dog her only companion, she heads out on an 8000-mile trek in her ‘78 F250, up the East Coast to the Canadian provinces, then across the Canadian Prairie and up the Alcan highway. The struggles of the road, the unexpected encounters along the way, are all part of an inspirational journey of embracing grief with amazing courage, unwavering resilience, and the power of never-ending love.
In her review Talkeetna author Sarah Birdsall wrote:
“Told in prose as beautiful as sunlight in a dark Alaskan January that finally finds its way above the shadowy hills, Marian Elliot’s third person memoir is a testament to the magnitude of love, the kindness of strangers, and the healing power of nature."
Other reviewers echo Birdsall sentiments including author Kaylene Johnson:
“ A deeply moving portrait of courage, Elliot's novel explores how the dark night of the soul can find passage through pain to a place of radiance and hope.”
Nancy Pope
“Out of the Dark is a story of trust, self-knowledge and healing. The journey with Jeanne/Elliott satisfies not only as a road trip marked by the kindness of strangers: readers will delight in the company of a woman traveler who grows into the self she’s in fact happy to recognize.”
And Leah Weiss .
Elliott’s writing is poetic, and her memoir has all the components of a wonderful tale: tragedy, loss, redemption and salvation. She makes all her readers want to move to Alaska.
Prolific author and award-winning poet Guy Kettlehack wrote this:
Marian Elliott’s memoir Out of the Dark is both absorbingly rich and quiet, trembling with feeling but unafraid of looking at and into life and death in all their power and beauty and heartbreak and harrowing effect. It is a deeply personal book which invites the reader to enter it and as far as is possible to join the author in her search for acceptance: first of the horror of her grown son killed in a car crash, and then attempting to make sense of the meanings of being a mother, lover, friend, and human being.
Her closest companion is her deceased son Joey’s dog Gulliver with whom she travels the country and rescues from sudden illnesses and danger and discovers just how powerful their closeness becomes. You travel with them freely for the best reasons. Give yourself the full power and love Marian Eliott has given this book: you’ll never regret making it your companion. Read it with your soul.
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