The Going and Goodbye: a memoir (Platypus Press, 2017)

The Going and Goodbye is an examination of love and loss and leaving and the search for meaning in the memories that remain. Tracing a path through rural Ohio, the American south and small towns of Mexico, these stories breathe life into a marriage and its dissolution; find a voice that fears mortality then faces it; explore faith in the face of these losses; and ultimately reveal the power of love and letting go.

"In this lovely memoir the narrator, although strongly rooted in a particular place, is always on the move into the unknown. … The lyrical, fluid style immediately invites the reader along for the ride. I read this with great pleasure!" —Bobbie Ann Mason, author of In Country

—REVIEWS—

Selected as a Dayton Daily News 2017 Favorite Nonfiction Book. "There were some lovely memoirs published, and Shuly Cawood penned my favorite one." —Dayton Daily News, from "The Book Nook: Vick's Favorite Nonfiction Titles from 2017"

"Cawood's writing [is] beautifully spare. . . " and her memoir is focused "on love and its silences, its heartbreaks, its negotiations, its promises and compromises, its costs and tradeoffs, and eventually its lovely, unselfish, unspoken gifts." —Main Street Rag

"Powerful writing" —Library Journal

"'The Going and Goodbye' is a gorgeously conceived expedition of a book. . . . If you read a lot of books then you probably know that feeling you can get when you encounter a writer who has written every single word with exquisite care and precision. . . . There are no wasted words here." —Yellow Springs News

"This is a brave writer who moves lyrically and fearlessly toward self-knowledge, a writer who is willing to probe the darkness in the chambers of her own heart, not just the hearts of others. . . . This is a voice you can trust with your life." —Joyce Dyer, author of Gum-Dipped and Goosetown

"In this luminous memoir Shuly Cawood dives into the deepest of waters—health and illness, the bonds of family, intimacy and its unraveling—and emerges with a treasure. . . .The Going and Goodbye is a revelation." —Matthew Goodman, New York Times bestselling author

"Cawood’s memoir is peppered with flashes of profundity wrapped in astute observations." —Latino Book Review

"This memoir ranges all over the past while creating a steady sense of forward motion through the narrator’s life. I think of these two streams of energy as lyric and narrative, the circling and moving forward. The two have a great dynamic here, which keeps this memoir surprising and fresh." —Kathryn Rhett, author of Souvenir and Immortal Village

"This book is a treasure." —Dayton Daily News

"Finding nonfiction that accurately captures the feeling of events both big and small can prove a challenge; however, The Going and Goodbye achieves this feat and much more." —New Southern Fugitives