Touching the Edge: A Mother's Spiritual Journey from Loss to Life - Hardcover

by Margaret Wurtele (Author)

Praise for Touching the Edge
""Touching the Edge is an homage to love, loss, and the rising grace that comes when grief is transformed into peace. Margaret Wurtele's bow to her son, Phil, is a story we can all recognize within the context of each family's dance with death. Her words can heal the fall of a human heart.""
-Terry Tempest Williams, author of Refuge, Red, and Leap
""Touching the Edge is an extraordinary memoir. Margaret Wurtele writes of the most painful events a parent can ever imagine, and yet she writes so honestly, so clearly, with prose as lucid and shimmering as cut crystal, that the book shines with a quiet grace. I too have a single grown child. I read this book and trembled. But I also saw, through Margaret Wurtele's eyes, a glimpse of the light that guided her through the darkness. It was a privilege to read this book.""
-Susan Allen Toth, author of Blooming: A Small-Town Girlhood and My Love Affair with England
""I happened to be climbing on Rainier the day that Phil was killed, and I often wondered who he was, what he was like. Now, thanks to this beautifully told account, I have a very good idea. And I have an even clearer sense of what it means to be a parent, and a child of God. This book will choke you up, but the tears will be more than worth it.""
-Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Long Distance: Testing the Limits of Body and Spirit in a Year of Living Strenuously
""The experience of love and loss, when shared, can become the alchemy of a rebirth of the spirit in others. In this journey to the other side of grief, Margaret Wurtele is fearlessly true to her experience of loss and makes herself available to be an agent of transformation for her readers. This is the glory of the human story: we really are 'members of one another' whether we realize it or not.""
-Alan Jones, Dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, and author of Seasons of Grace, The Soul's Journey, and Living the Truth

Front Jacket

Losing a child is every mother's worst nightmare. In this extraordinarily moving book, Margaret Wurtele tells the story of losing her only biological child, her energetic and adventurous twenty-two-year-old son, Phil. Phil was killed while attempting to rescue a climber who had broken his ankle on Mount Rainier. At the time, Margaret was just about to turn fifty and had been absorbed in an intense midlife spiritual awakening. Phil's sudden death both plunged her into grief and made her feel betrayed by the God whom she had only just embraced.

Written from the heart, Touching the Edge is the story of a smart and compassionate woman, of a sensitive son experiencing growing pains, and of their relationship. Brought up in the plains of Minnesota, Phil had a taste for adventure and had a lifelong fascination with the majestic beauty and inherent danger of mountains. He lived for the adrenaline rush of risk, from bungee jumping to diving off high cliffs into frigid waters to, most of all, mountain climbing. He was just coming into his own as a loving young man who was developing his own interest in spiritual concerns.

With a novelist's eye for detail and with remarkable honesty, Margaret Wurtele takes us along on her own spiritual journey. Her elegantly simple account of the crisis of faith she underwent in the wake of Phil's death will resonate with anyone who has suffered a major loss, and her descriptions of the love and support she received from her family, friends, and community are both uplifting and instructive. Margaret shares the surprising insights that helped her move back from the edge of despair to rekindle a deeper and more meaningful spiritual life.

Poignant, exquisite, and wise, this beautifully written account of one woman's dark night of the soul is must-reading for anyone faced with a personal tragedy or a crisis of the spirit. Touching the Edge offers hope, comfort, and inspiration to women and men in any circumstance who are searching for ways to renew the spirit and triumph in the face of adversity.

Back Jacket

Praise for Touching the Edge

""Touching the Edge is an homage to love, loss, and the rising grace that comes when grief is transformed into peace. Margaret Wurtele's bow to her son, Phil, is a story we can all recognize within the context of each family's dance with death. Her words can heal the fall of a human heart.""
-Terry Tempest Williams, author of Refuge, Red, and Leap

""Touching the Edge is an extraordinary memoir. Margaret Wurtele writes of the most painful events a parent can ever imagine, and yet she writes so honestly, so clearly, with prose as lucid and shimmering as cut crystal, that the book shines with a quiet grace. I too have a single grown child. I read this book and trembled. But I also saw, through Margaret Wurtele's eyes, a glimpse of the light that guided her through the darkness. It was a privilege to read this book.""
-Susan Allen Toth, author of Blooming: A Small-Town Girlhood and My Love Affair with England

""I happened to be climbing on Rainier the day that Phil was killed, and I often wondered who he was, what he was like. Now, thanks to this beautifully told account, I have a very good idea. And I have an even clearer sense of what it means to be a parent, and a child of God. This book will choke you up, but the tears will be more than worth it.""
-Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Long Distance: Testing the Limits of Body and Spirit in a Year of Living Strenuously

""The experience of love and loss, when shared, can become the alchemy of a rebirth of the spirit in others. In this journey to the other side of grief, Margaret Wurtele is fearlessly true to her experience of loss and makes herself available to be an agent of transformation for her readers. This is the glory of the human story: we really are 'members of one another' whether we realize it or not.""
-Alan Jones, Dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, and author of Seasons of Grace, The Soul's Journey, and Living the Truth

Author Biography

MARGARET WURTELE was the cofounder of the Minnesota-based independent publisher Hungry Mind Press, now Ruminator Books Press. The author of a previous spiritual memoir, Taking Root, she is a former board chair of the Guthrie Theater and Minnesota's Episcopal House of Prayer. She and her husband divide their time between Minneapolis and California's Napa Valley, where they grow grapes and produce Terra Valentine wine.