All the Way to the River: Love, Loss and Liberation

Bestseller Gilbert (City of Girls) discusses in this inspiring account how she struggled through financial hazards, obsessive love affairs, and emotional land mines on her way to “a healthy relationship with myself” after a tumultuous romance. Gilbert first met Rayya Elias in 2000, when Elias began cutting Gilbert’s hair just before the author grew disenchanted with her first marriage. The pair gradually evolved from casual friends to soulmates, with Gilbert ending her second marriage to start a relationship with Elias in the 2010s after Elias received a terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosis. After the couple consummated their attraction, both fell deeper into addiction—Gilbert to love and sex, Elias to alcohol and drugs. After Elias died in 2018, Gilbert examined her addictions and arrived at a spiritual awakening (“I gave my life to God then, the way I used to give it to strangers”). Gilbert achieves her signature intimacy through a bluntly confessional tone (“Sex has always been the fastest and most direct way for me to feel thoroughly chosen”) and an admirable ability to stare darkness in the face without losing hope. Readers struggling with addiction or seeking a path through heartbreak will find invaluable wisdom in these pages. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency. (Sept.)