Stéphane GersonCritiques

This is such a tragedy. To lose your 8-year-old son on vacation while rafting and later finding out it could have been prevented if the rafting company cared more about safety than profit is heartbreaking. This family learned how to go forward and live without their son in the physical world when tragedy can pull a family apart.

Disaster Falls is a tragic story about loss, grieving, and healing. It's a parent's worst nightmare.

I found myself crying throughout the book and the story felt so real to me. Everything they endured can be felt as the words feel as though they're just pouring out of him. As a parent, I think the emotions are so strong because you put yourself in their shoes, and glimpse the agony and terror they live with.

I almost wished the story was told in chronological order, but it makes sense in the end.

3.5***

Thanks to Netgalley and the author for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I received an Advance Reader's Copy of this book.

This is a beautifully written memoir by a father whose 8-year-old son, Owen, dies in a river rafting accident in Disaster Falls, Utah. The author tells his story in pieces, not starting the book with a full account of what happened on the river. His grief is so well described that I could begin to understand a parent's pain after a child's death. Part of the story is the author's own experience with his father's death (after Owen's death), and how many of his emotions came full circle. This story will stay with me for a long time.

There is no owner’s manual for grief.

Stéphane Gerson calmly shares the story of his family during the five years following the accidental death of an eight year old child. Parts of this book are tough to read. Sometimes I had to put it down. But after starting the book, I needed to know how this family had moved forward, coping with the unimaginable.

The description of the accident itself unfolds as does memory, in flashbacks and remembered premonitions, second thoughts and comforts, clinical facts and suppositions. It nestles amidst the story of a family of four, suddenly a family of three, struggling to make sense of how to go on with their lives individually and, by conscious agreement, together.

Some of what happened after Owen’s death was predictable, some unexpected and seemingly odd - until the reader remembers that each parent, sibling, classmate, and friend experienced this loss in a unique way.½

As I lost a child, the book was very sad for me. It was very hard and personal to me of the reality of death that we are unprepared for in our life.
It was a very honest look at the family and their mourning the loss of the son. This real story of their next few years was very honest look at the family. This was an actual story.

Such an extremely sad story. I honestly could not finish it. Sorry

Is there anything more devastating than the death of a child? It is an inversion of the universe, a shattering of the heart, an unrepairable rip in the fabric of life. For Stephane Gerson and his family, it became a terrible reality when 8 year old Owen drowned on a family rafting vacation. And this memoir is one of the ways in which Gerson not only acknowledged their huge loss but a way that allowed him to finally look more closely at what happened that day, to understand and to accept.

When you plan a vacation with your two young children, you would never imagine that your family of four would be a family of three before it is over. The Gersons, father Stephane, mother Alison, oldest son Julian, and youngest son Owen couldn't have either. Their vacation was supposed to be safe for families with children, a rafting trip on the Green River in Utah. But they left New York as four and returned home as three, Owen having drowned at the spot known as Disaster Falls. Gerson chronicles his overwhelming grief at losing Owen as well as the different journeys that Alison and Julian also took through the days, weeks, months, and years after Owen's death. He speaks of the isolation of sorrow, the pain and anguish, his guilt over what happened that day, and the shocked huddle of a family violently rent apart in this emotionally devastating memoir.

The non-linear time line jumps from the rawness of immediately after the accident to what led up to it and back again as the family learns to negotiate life after Owen. The whole of how Owen died isn't fully presented until well into the book, Gerson coming close to it before shutting down the remembrance many times, only telling the whole of it when he feels he's capable and strong enough to look at it. The story is heart rending and the reader can feel the ache and the searching in the haunting writing even years after Owen's death. The book is clearly a way for Gerson to honor his son and his memory of his son, to mourn the loss not only of the boy that he was, but also the whole of the imagined life he never had a chance to live. There are repetitions here but they so closely echo the stunned and frozen rehashing of what happened, the what ifs, and the if onlys that they seem entirely fitting. Not easy to read, this is a thoughtful, introspective, quite beautiful look at a family and a father going on forever changed by their shared loss for those readers who don't mind being emotionally wrung out at the end of a book.

I received this for free from Early Reviewers. I made it to page 70. The reason why I didn't finish the book is because it felt like the story was repeating itself over and over. It's a true story about the writer losing his young son on a river rapids vacation trip.

This is not a book I would have normally picked to read. However, I received it through the Early Reviewers program. I read it in two days. The pain this father went through in losing a child was very compelling. I appreciated how he discussed the different ways he grieved as compared to his wife. Not a cheerful topic, but a book that kept my interest.

The double entendre title gives notice of Gerson’s abilities describing what a family goes through dealing with gut wrenching, heart pounding, fear-inducing loss. Quickly, not only do we begin to understand the loss itself, but we see the suffering of the extended family, friends, co-workers, people who in their kindest of intentions, can still get it all wrong, and occasionally get it right. When dealing with such a bereavement, you feel it as only it affects you. You see others struggling but that amounts to nothing compared to the pain, guilt and regret in your mind. Gerson relates a terribly sad story and manages to tell the world, that life goes on. Life is different. Life will never be the same and that ultimately, life is change. A beautifully told “family story.”

This book was provided gratis in return for an honest review.

This memoir details the loss of son and the aftermath associated with the loss. The work is very readable but is emotionally challenging, as it no doubt should be. Though I ended up having to read it in smaller doses, I highly recommend this book.

Disaster Falls is a true story of how the writer and his family dealt with the death of their son. By chronicling the day to day and how each dealt with the death of Owen we are able to see the grief process and how it is not the same for each person. The family stayed true to not breaking apart when confronting unimaginable grief. I had trouble starting this book and I believe it is due to the subject matter and content. I think you must be in a certain head space yourself when reading true stories like this. It is not something that can be read quickly. It must be read and put down while the readers them-self come to terms with the grief of the author. Taking time to give this book the full focus that it deserves will do the reader good.

Come along with the author as he takes you on a journey of grief, tragedy, and mourning. On a family rafting vacation in Utah, the youngest member of the Gerson family, Owen, was swept away by the river and drowned. This book is the father's attempt to understand and cope with the accident, his culpability, and his struggle to go on living. Together with his wife and remaining son, Stephane seeks to remember Owen while letting him go.

A very intimate and moving story about death and it's place in life.

Sad from beginning to end, but a great read. Goes through the processing of the sudden death of a child.

"Disaster Falls" by Stephane Gerson is the chronicle of a family having to deal with the tragic death of their eight-year-old son/brother Owen, who died while white-water rafting on the family vacation. The author, Owen's father, tells how the family dealt with the accident the day that it occured and in the
days and months that followed. He gives a detailed account of how he, his wife and Owen's brother Julian each coped seperately and together with the loss. This book is filled with the raw emotions that they all experienced and also details how they reacted with extended family and friends. The subject matter of this book makes this book difficult to read but also could be beneficial to anyone who has ever experienced the accidental death of a family member, especially a child. This book is very well written and very well worth the read.

In this heart-wrenching memoir, Gerson works through the grief caused by the death of his son. His memoir resembles the journal he kept after his son’s death. He shifts topics, skirting the actual day of the accident until later in the book, replicating his aversion to thinking about the accident until he’s ready to revisit it. He also discusses his own coping mechanisms and those of his wife and surviving son. On the night of the accident, when the family was forced to camp overnight next to the river that had taken their son’s life, his wife makes a vow to move forward and not live in the past. While this wasn’t always possible for them, Gerson and his wife do move forward together, never letting their own anger and grief destroy them. They each find a way to cope with their son’s death and not lose each other in the process. When, a few years later, Gerson’s father dies after a battle with cancer, he’s better able to reconcile his relationship with his father and the one he was never able to have with his son.½

A haunting account of a man trying to make sense of the death of his eight-year-old son who was drowned in a boating accident.

A couple and their two sons took a float trip on Utah’s Green River. They knew little about running rivers or the American west, but the trip was said to be safe for children. The unthinkable happened. Their younger son drowned in the rapids. Over the next three years, the boy’s father struggled to make sense of what had taken place as the family tried to move on. This book is his narrative of that struggle.

Stephane Gerson is a cultural historian who teaches at New York University. Cultural historians are an emerging subset of historians who focus on understanding cultural adaptations and how they change. In his prize-winning scholarly work, Gerson has focused on topics like memories and geographical place. For example, he has looked at the impact of tumultuous events like the French Revolution on individuals and culture rather than its concrete political affect. Unlike traditional intellectual historians who have studied “great men and great ideas,” cultural historians look at the attitudes that pervade groups of people. They are sensitive to the stories that people construct to explain their lives. They are aware that such stories may differ widely and be contradictory. Instead of absolute factual accuracy, they are interested in the shape and textures of the stories. Gerson’s account of accepting his son’s death grows out of the assumptions of his field, although he shuns the jargon that too often makes cultural history difficult to read.

What happened to eight-year-old Owen was incomprehensible to his father, and Gerson needed to find a means of coping with it. Although he had no hope that would find a definite answer to his literal or metaphysical questions, his response was to write, to craft words that could allow him to negotiate the path ahead. At first he wrote in his journal and later he composed this book.

Gerson writes with skill and insight. He brings readers into his numbness and sense of isolation without becoming voyeuristic or smothering them in his emotions. He is fully aware of what words can and cannot do. Deliberately refusing to get caught up in anger and blame, he experiences deep guilt as a parent who failed at any parent’s chief task, keeping his child safe. Because he wants to honor and remember his son, he continues to look for the words to express the unthinkable.

As Gerson makes clear, he has not written an advice book but an account of his own introspective journey. His wife and his surviving son took different paths, but the family deliberately decided not to allow the tragedy to destroy their family bonds. Theirs was a Jewish family, but not a particularly observant one. At times traditional Jewish words and practices resonated, but family did not find a solution to their grief in religion. Gerson’s parents had escaped Nazi Germany and continued to live in Belgium. After Owen’s death, Gerson pondered his own identity as both a father and a son. His father’s death, three years after Owen’s, brought him a sense of his ongoing relationship to both.

Disaster Falls is the name of the book and the place where Owen died. It also identifies the devastating loss of meaning that can occur in our lives. As such I recommend this book to all who are dealing such losses themselves. Reading Gerson can provide a sense that those who grieve are not as alone as they often feel. Another person has been through the darkness been able to find words for it, inadequate as they may be. The book also can provide insight and permission to follow one’s path because there is no one required way to grieve.

In addition, Gerson offers an example what it means to “construct our own stories.” Such an idea is commonplace among some academics, but some within and without academia, find it disturbing and overly relativistic. Gerson displays how stories are not simply things we “make up” but can be grounded in the objective physical realities of life. The fact Owen died is about as real as anything can be. So are the swirling contradictions that Gerson experiences. The story is literally a way to bring order to what is unthinkable. The story does not claim to be perfectly objectively true, although it must include that sort of truth. It is not the only valid story; other valid stories can be told from other perspectives. The story’s power is that an acceptable narrative can allow us to survive extreme loss. As my nation moves into an unthinkable future, I long for words to make bearable. Perhaps we all need to find new stories to deal with our new realities.

I sincerely recommend this book to a variety of readers who are curious about creating stories that face reality and steady us as we live through turbulent times.

A book dealing with the sudden death of their child on a rafting vacation in Utah and the aftermath of that tragedy. The father withdraws and blames himself sometimes but decides to write something every day in a journal about his son. The mother tries to just keep busy and not think about it. The first year is the hardest but gradually over time they learn to cope with their loss and bring a new life into the world.

I cannot imagine every losing a child and having the strength to write a memoir about the death of a child. However, I wasn't as impressed with this memoir. I understand that we all grieve in different manner and fashions, but does that mean this family should get a metal for staying together,.or eventually have a another child to help heal. I feel as if that's what most ponder in a situation like this. The story jumped from time back and forth,and I could keep up, but was exhausted trying to do so in understanding the grief and guilt while trying to hear of how the death occurred. I'm glad they were able to find some semblance of peace and carry on, the story just felt a little flat.

Raw and visceral and heartbreakingly real, this is an important story that is not easy to read and will be impossible to forget.

A heart-wrenching memoir of loss, grief, guilt, and pain as a father re-counts the tragedy of losing his eight year old son. What was supposed to be a fun family trip soon turned into a nightmare when their youngest son drowned while kayaking on the Green River. Almost numb with pain, the author recounts with clarifying and insightful detail the emotions (or sometimes lack thereof) experienced by him, his wife, and their only remaining child. Spanning over the course of a few years, this memoir is a glimpse into the tragedy that many families experience everyday. A wonderful, but heart breaking memoir that beneficial for everyone to read. Not everyone experiences grief the same way and reading this will help readers with that cold hard fact.

This is an important book. The author has carefully and thoughtfully examined the ramifications of his family's terrible, tragic loss, and has written a book which reveals much about human nature. This is a serious work, not a fun book. My advice to you: read it!

This one ties into my reading about end of life since the author talks about the death of his father later in the book. A 10 month decline from cancer and having assisted suicide be legal in Belgium led his father to a much different death than experienced by the author's son, Owen. Owen fell out of a raft on a river trip and drowned at 8 years old. This book records the way Gerson comes to terms with his son's death, talking about the first and second years in detail, but circling around the circumstances of the death a lot. I can see how it was super hard to face, but as a reader I'd have preferred to have at least the medium level details of how the accident happened, beyond what I summarised above. It's a compelling read though, raw and honest, written in consultation with his wife who grieved in a totally different way. I half suspected at points that Lin Manuel Miranda had read a copy of this before writing certain songs in Hamilton, but maybe it's just that the experience of losing a son is somewhat universal for fathers. One quote that stood out to me:

[...] were subjected to forms of risk they did not comprehend because these risks were not made comprehensible.

The rafting company was letting the paying guests make their own calls on if and how they would run the rapids, yet didn't make sure that the guests had the necessary information to make a solid estimate of the risks involved.½

The loss of a child bring unimaginable pain. It's through this pain that Stephane Gerson writes Disaster Falls. Son, Owen's death on a family rafting trip tears a rent in their family fabric that will never be completely mended. Through this pain, Gerson finds a new way and a reason to reach out to his father, realizes that his wife Alison has a different way of dealing with Owen's death, and eventually finds new hope for the future.

The journal of the immediate aftermath and several years following Owen's death is heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time.

I don't know why I thought this was a novel up until I started reading it, but that's neither here nor there, I suppose. This is a bit of a rough read, but it does read like grief feels - disjointed, bouncing from place to place and thought to thought with no linear or logical explanation. To my surprise, in a book about the death of a young son, the part that got to me more was the death of Gerson's father. Perhaps it was the ability to finally say things that had troubled him, or the fact that he was actually able to say goodbye, or the dignity with which Berl was able to choose his end. Perhaps it was that this section contained the most selfishly affecting passage to me - the discussion of Julian now having to make end-of-life decisions for Gerson and his wife alone. As a person who has lost a sibling, I will always connect more with explorations and depictions of that loss and those few sentences that touched on something I've had to recognize myself were quietly moving.

I received this book as part of LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.