Gail Godwin will talk about her new book, Getting To Know Death, at Oblong Rhinebeck. In Getting to Know Death—A Meditation, celebrated Woodstock author Gail Godwin recounts falling in her garden at 85 years old while attempting to water a newly planted dogwood tree, and fracturing her neck (the C2 bone, or the colorfully nicknamed "hangman's break"). The book recounts, in lucid prose, her moment-to-moment decisions after the fall—calculating the distance needed to reach the house after finding herself on the ground, baking in the sun, head and neck twisted to the left, blood dripping. She butt-walks to the steps, managing to reach the phone and dial 911.
