FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

“With thoughtfulness and grace, she reconstructs…the experience of grief. A moving exploration of widowhood.”
—Kirkus Reviews on Those Who Remain

She was 23 years old when she was widowed by war and rather than bury her husband in his coffin, she buried every memory of their brief life together.  Forty years later she exhumed the grave and came to terms with her loss and her grief.  Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2013 writer-teacher-actress Ruth W. Crocker brings her journey of love, loss, and inspiration to the page in her beautiful memoir THOSE WHO REMAIN: Remembrance and Reunion after War (Elm Grove Press; $18.95).

THOSE WHO REMAIN

Remembrance and Reunion after War

By: Ruth W. Crocker

Sometimes the reaction to loss is anger along with the need to be reckless and to search for meaning in what has happened.  In THOSE WHO REMAIN, Ruth W. Crocker was propelled by her complex emotions at the time.  On the one hand she needed to close the door on her previous life, and on the other she wanted to pay tribute to her husband’s memory and escape from her grief.  To this end she hiked up to the treacherous North Face of the Eiger, the most notorious mountain in the Swiss Alps, to spread her husband’s ashes at the top of the climb they were supposed to do together.

Weaving her beautifully-written recollections with diary entries, letters between her and her husband, and conversations with his comrades, Ruth gives readers an intimate glimpse into the life of a woman who faced her fears and braved the forces of nature to learn that she could survive anything that came her way.  A unique true story of grief and recovery with a surprising revelation, THOSE WHO REMAIN demonstrates the tenacious will of the human spirit to heal.