Back from Suicide:
Before and After the Essential Patrick
"I did not put it down, except to eat and sleep. It is a tour de force—pitch-perfect."
--Nancy Cobb, In Lieu of Flowers: A Conversation for the Living
Rimer with Cash, Pat's twin sister Libby's dog. Photo by Libby Wood.
Marie Lisette Rimer received a BA in Sociology and an MA in Secondary Education at the University of Connecticut. She was a publicist for the Connecticut legislature and an award-winning English teacher at Rectory School in Pomfret, Connecticut. The joy of three children and country living was shattered by the suicide of her youngest son, Patrick Wood. She began a search to learn why, at first through Patrick’s brilliance and then through his depression and her mother’s similar death.
She wrote her first book to reveal the suicidal mind through the misery of depression and the difficulty of coming out. She wrote to learn why the least likely person would kill himself. Back from Suicide is the story of life after tragedy and the search for respite through understanding.
Back from Suicide won the Storytrade Nonfiction Prodigy Award, the Book of the Year First Nonfiction and Nonfiction LGBTQ+ awards, second place overall Book of the Year award, the PenCraft Nonfiction Memoir award, and the Firebird Book Awards for LGBTQ Nonfiction and Death and Dying. Rimer has been published in the Hartford Courant and the Stanford Daily.