Excerpt from Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

May 27, 2019

WEST TISBURY

"Is this the home of Tony Horwitz?"

Yes

"Who am I speaking to?"

This is his wife

That is exact. The rest is a blur.

"Collapsed in the street ... tried to resuscitate at the scene ...brought to the hospital ... couldn't revive him... ."

And, so, now he's in the OR. And, so, now we've admitted him for a procedure. And, so, now we're keeping him for observation.

So many things that logically should have followed.

But she says none of these things. Instead, the illogical thing:

He's dead.

No.

Not Tony. Not him. Not my husband out on the road energetically promoting his new book. My husband with the toned body of a six-day-a-week gym rat. The sixty-year-old who still wears clothes the same size as the day I met him in his twenties. My husband, younger than I am—hilarious, bursting with vitality. He's way too busy living. He cannot possibly be dead.

The resident's voice is flat, exhausted. She is impatient with me as I ask her to repeat what she has just said. It is, she tells me, the end of her shift. She gives me a number for the doctor who is coming on duty in this ER, five hundred miles away in Washington, D.C.
She can't get me off the phone fast enough.

But Tony—I need to see him. Where will he be when I get there?

"We can't keep a body in the ER. It will be moved to the hospital morgue to be picked up by the DC medical examiner."

It. A body. She means Tony.

So how will I see him? I'm in Massachusetts, on an island. It's going to take me hours to get there—

She cuts me off.

"The DC police will need to talk to you. Make sure they can reach you."

And then she is gone.

At some moment in this call, I stood up from my desk. When the phone rang, at eighteen minutes past one, I'd only just sat down to work after a morning of distractions. I'd had a happy conversation on the phone with my older son, a recent college graduate, adventuring around the world and about to board a plane in Manila for the eight-hour flight to Sydney, where he would stay with my sister. A friend, Susanna, had come to borrow or return a book—I can't recall which. We'd gone down to the paddock to throw hay to the
horses and hung around there, draped on the split rails, chatting.

I'd read a long email from Tony about the visit he'd made the day before to the Virginia village where we lived for ten years. It was mostly unpunctuated, gossipy, catching me up on the doings of our former neighbors—their tribulations with dry wells and divorces
("she refers to him as her was-band"). The email concluded:

"didn't wish self back there (if for no other reason, 90 degrees and 100 percent humidity, and still May) but heartened that it seems to have gently evolved while keeping history and quirk. Tomorrow back to the grind and am now 2-3 episodes behind on Billions so
you'll have rewatch upon return. love and hugs"

I'd hit send on my reply and finally opened the file titled Horse, the novel I was supposed to be writing.

Then, the phone.

Another distraction. I considered letting it go to voicemail.

But maybe there was a question my older son had forgotten to ask. My younger son was away at boarding school, sitting his end-of-year exams. Perhaps he needed something. I had to pick up.

The caller ID was hard to read in the bright sunlight. Only as I brought the handset close could I make out gw hsp on the display. Don't tell me I picked up a darn fundraising call... .

Now the dial tone burred. I stared at the handset. My legs started to shake. But I couldn't sit down. I paced across the room, feeling the howl forming in my chest. I needed to scream, weep, throw myself on the floor, rend my garments, tear my hair.

But I couldn't allow myself to do any of those things.

Excerpted from Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks. Copyright © 2025 by Geraldine Brooks. Excerpted by permission of Viking. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.