Sinkhole
The Legacy of a Suicide
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Sinkhole
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Narrated by:
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Lindsey Dorcus
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By:
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Juliet Patterson
About this listen
A sublimely elegant, fractured reckoning with the legacy and inheritance of suicide in one American family.
In 2009, Juliet Patterson was recovering from a serious car accident when she learned her father had died by suicide. His death was part of a disturbing pattern in her family. Her father’s father had taken his own life; so had her mother’s. Over the weeks and months that followed, grieving and in physical pain, Patterson kept returning to one question: Why? Why had her family lost so many men, so many fathers, and what lay beneath the silence that had taken hold?
In three graceful movements, Patterson explores these questions. In the winter of her father’s death, she struggles to make sense of the loss—sifting through the few belongings he left behind, looking to signs and symbols for meaning. As the spring thaw comes, she and her mother depart Minnesota for her father’s burial in her parents’ hometown of Pittsburg, Kansas. A once-prosperous town of promise and of violence, against people and the land, Pittsburg is now literally undermined by abandoned claims and sinkholes. There, Patterson carefully gathers evidence and radically imagines the final days of the grandfathers—one a fiery pro-labor politician, the other a melancholy businessman—she never knew. And finally, she returns to her father: to the haunting subjects of goodbyes, of loss, and of how to break the cycle.
A stunning elegy that vividly enacts Emily Dickinson’s dictum to “tell it slant,” Sinkhole richly layers personal, familial, political, and environmental histories to provide not answers but essential, heartbreaking truth.
©2022 Juliet Patterson (P)2022 Spotify AudiobooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Story5 out of 5 stars 137
A Chance in the World is the unbelievably true story of a wounded and broken boy destined to become a man of resilience, determination, and vision. Through it all, Steve's story teaches us that no matter how broken our past, no matter how great our misfortunes, we have it in us to create a new beginning and to build a place where love awaits.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Good Book
- By Amazon Customer on 08-19-20
By: Steve Pemberton
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They Left Us Everything
- A Memoir
- By: Plum Johnson
- Narrated by: Pilar Witherspoon
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 52
After almost 20 years of caring for elderly parents - first for their senile father and then for their cantankerous 93-year-old mother - author Plum Johnson and her three younger brothers have finally fallen to their middle-aged knees with conflicted feelings of grief and relief. Now they must empty and sell the beloved family home, 23 rooms bulging with history, antiques, and oxygen tanks. Plum thought, How tough will that be? I know how to buy garbage bags. But the task turns out to be much harder and more rewarding than she ever imagined.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Thought provoking
- By Margaret on 05-02-17
By: Plum Johnson
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Love and Other Ways of Dying
- Essays
- By: Michael Paterniti
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 77
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4 out of 5 stars 62
In the 17 wide-ranging essays collected for the first time in Love and Other Ways of Dying, he brings his full literary powers to bear, pondering happiness and grief, memory and the redemptive power of human connection. In the remote Ukranian countryside, Paterniti picks apples (and faces mortality) with a real-life giant; in Nanjing, China, he confronts a distraught jumper on a suicide bridge.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Incredibly intimate voice for humanity
- By Ed Hodges on 01-02-16
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Native Country of the Heart
- A Memoir
- By: Cherríe Moraga
- Narrated by: Cherríe Moraga
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story5 out of 5 stars 52
Native Country of the Heart is the writer and activist Cherrie Moraga's love letter to her "unlettered" mother. It begins with her mother, Elvira Isabel Moraga, who as a child, along with her siblings, was hired out by her own father to pick cotton in California's Imperial Valley. The lives of Cherrie and her mother, and of their people, are woven together in a story of critical reflection and deep personal revelation as Moraga charts her own coming to consciousness alongside the heartbreaking story of her mother's decline.
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5 out of 5 stars
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a must read for all chicanx
- By Rachel Barnett on 04-28-19
By: Cherríe Moraga
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Black Dog of Fate
- A Memoir
- By: Peter Balakian
- Narrated by: Peter Balakian
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 76
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 66
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 65
The first-born son of his generation, Peter Balakian grew up in a close, extended family, sheltered by 1950s and '60s New Jersey suburbia. He was immersed in an all-American boyhood defined by rock 'n' roll, adolescent pranks, and a passion for the New York Yankees that he shared with his beloved grandmother. But beneath this sunny world lay the dark specter of the trauma his family and ancestors had experienced: the Turkish government's extermination of more than a million Armenians.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book!
- By Lm on 06-27-13
By: Peter Balakian
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Driving on the Rim
- By: Thomas McGuane
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 92
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4 out of 5 stars 71
The unforgettable voyager of this dark picaresque is I. B. "Berl" Pickett, M.D., whose die was probably cast the moment his mother thought to name him after Irving Berlin. Other insults piled on apace thereafter: the spasms of Pentecostal Sunday worship; the social debilitation of following his parents' itinerant rug-shampooing business; the erotic initiation at the hands of his aunt. It's hard to imagine what would have become of him had he not gone to medical school.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Delightful
- By Roy on 01-05-11
By: Thomas McGuane
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American Ghost
- A Family's Haunted Past in the Desert Southwest
- By: Hannah Nordhaus
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 151
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 130
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Story4 out of 5 stars 130
The dark-eyed woman in the long, black gown was first seen in the 1970s, standing near a fireplace. She was sad and translucent, present and absent at once. Strange things began to happen in the Santa Fe hotel where she was seen. Gas fireplaces turned off and on without anyone touching a switch. Glasses flew off shelves. And in one second-floor suite with a canopy bed and arched windows looking out to the mountains, guests reported alarming events.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A true American tale
- By Cleo Colorado on 05-29-15
By: Hannah Nordhaus
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The Cut Out Girl
- A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found
- By: Bart van Es
- Narrated by: Bart van Es
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 60
Bart van Es left Holland for England many years ago, but one story from his Dutch childhood never left him. It was a mystery of sorts: A young Jewish girl named Lientje had been taken in during the war by relatives and hidden from the Nazis, handed over by her parents. The girl had been raised by her foster family as one of their own, but then, well after the war, they were no longer in touch. What was the girl's side of the story, Bart wondered? What really happened during the war and after? So began an investigation that would consume Bart van Es's life and change it.
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5 out of 5 stars
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a powerful & unique work on the Holocaust
- By D. Littman on 03-06-19
By: Bart van Es
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White Noise
- By: Don DeLillo
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 858
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 753
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Story4 out of 5 stars 751
When an industrial accident unleashes an "airborne toxic event", a lethal black chemical cloud floats over the Gladneys' lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladneys - radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings - pulsing with life yet suggesting something ominous.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Designed to be analyzed by an English class
- By RI in Canada on 10-15-16
By: Don DeLillo
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The Pendulum
- A Granddaughter's Search for Her Family's Forbidden Nazi Past
- By: Julie Lindahl
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 253
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 225
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 225
This powerful memoir traces Brazilian-born American Julie Lindahl's journey to uncover her grandparents' role in the Third Reich, as she is driven to understand how and why they became members of Hitler's elite, the SS. Out of the unbearable heart of the story - the unclaimed guilt that devours a family through the generations - emerges an unflinching will to learn the truth.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Exceptional
- By Jean on 01-14-19
By: Julie Lindahl
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Beer Money
- A Memoir of Privilege and Loss
- By: Frances Stroh
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 212
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 191
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Story4 out of 5 stars 190
Frances Stroh's earliest memories are ones of great privilege: shopping trips to London and New York, lunches served by black-tied waiters at the Regency Hotel, and a house filled with precious antiques, which she was forbidden to touch. Established in Detroit in 1850, by 1984 the Stroh Brewing Company had become the largest private beer fortune in America and a brand emblematic of the American dream itself; while Stroh was coming of age, the Stroh family fortune was estimated to be worth $700 million.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Beer boring
- By Richard E. Putt Jr. on 05-22-16
By: Frances Stroh
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Bettyville
- By: George Hodgman
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 371
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 332
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Story4 out of 5 stars 332
When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...
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1 out of 5 stars
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Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George
- By Sara on 10-08-15
By: George Hodgman
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Pure Land
- A True Story of Three Lives, Three Cultures and the Search for Heaven on Earth
- By: Annette McGivney
- Narrated by: Christine Marshall
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 121
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 103
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 106
Pure Land is the story of the most brutal murder in the history of the Grand Canyon and how McGivney's quest to investigate the victim's life and death wound up guiding the author through her own life-threatening crisis. On this journey stretching from the southern tip of Japan to the bottom of Grand Canyon, and into the ugliest aspects of human behavior, Pure Land offers proof of the healing power of nature and of the resiliency of the human spirit.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Compelling story about Tomomi, too much personal
- By Chester Chellman on 02-02-18
By: Annette McGivney
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Alligator Candy
- A Memoir
- By: David Kushner
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 56
From award-winning journalist David Kushner, Alligator Candy is a reported memoir about family, survival, and the unwavering power of love. David Kushner grew up in the early 1970s in the Florida suburbs. It was when kids still ran free, riding bikes and disappearing into the nearby woods for hours at a time. One morning in 1973, however, everything changed. David’s older brother, Jon, biked through the forest to the convenience store for candy, and never returned.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very well done
- By Nic on 06-27-18
By: David Kushner
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When a Crocodile Eats the Sun
- A Memoir of Africa
- By: Peter Godwin
- Narrated by: Peter Godwin
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 89
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 80
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Story5 out of 5 stars 78
After his father's heart attack in 1984, Peter Godwin began a series of pilgrimages back to Zimbabwe, the land of his birth, from Manhattan, where he now lives. On these frequent visits to check on his elderly parents, he bore witness to Zimbabwe's dramatic spiral downward into the jaws of violent chaos, presided over by an increasingly enraged dictator. And yet long after their comfortable lifestyle had been shattered and millions were fleeing, his parents refuse to leave, steadfast in their allegiance to the failed state that has been their adopted home for 50 years.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Worth the listen.
- By SEE on 09-06-21
By: Peter Godwin
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The Waiting
- The True Story of a Lost Child, a Lifetime of Longing, and a Miracle for a Mother Who Never Gave Up
- By: Cathy LaGrow, Cindy Coloma - contributor
- Narrated by: Pamela Klein
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 261
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 239
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 239
In the summer of 1928, sixteen-year-old Minka was looking forward to a sewing class picnic. This would be a rare chance to put aside farm chores, don a pretty dress, and enjoy an outing with other girls. It would be a day to remember. And it was - but not in the way Minka had dreamed. Cornered by a stranger in the woods, the young girl was assaulted. Minka still believed that the stork brought babies; she would not discover for months that she was pregnant.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Captivating and fantastic
- By John alexander on 10-03-19
By: Cathy LaGrow, and others
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The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
- By: Dinaw Mengestu
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 176
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 146
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Story4 out of 5 stars 146
Ethiopian émigré Dinaw Mengestu is a skilled observer of people who offers a colorful debut work of fiction. Insightful and swiftly paced, this novel evokes past and present in the course of its compelling narrative. It's the `70s, and one D.C. neighborhood is undergoing big changes. In the mix is Ethiopian grocery owner Sepha Stephanos - a man with a complex past who fled his homeland after seeing his father brutalized by themilitary. He hopes for new prospects in D.C.'s gentrification process.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book, wonderful reader
- By Lisbeth on 11-22-11
By: Dinaw Mengestu
What listeners say about Sinkhole
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Felicia Glidden
- 10-04-22
Interwoven history and the present. so good
This book punches hard out of the gate, especially for those of us who have had someone close kill themselves. The pacing throughout is wonderful as we learn more. The intense observation of moments in time was very moving for me. In the stillness of a memory of standing silent next to her father, the fullness inside that silence is incredible. Good performance and a great book for these times. Emotionally charged, and needed.
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