Giving Up the Ghost by Samantha Rose

By Samantha Rose

Notes from Cole:

Giving Up the Ghost by Samantha Rose is a subtle powerhouse of a memoir—tender, weighty, and human. I finished it on Mother’s Day, and it lingered with me for days afterward. Rose, a longtime ghostwriter, steps out from behind the veil of other people’s stories to tell her own: a reckoning with her mother’s suicide and her own lifelong journey from invisibility toward visibility. In a voice that’s both earnest and meaningful, she gently invites the reader into her grief—not to solve it, but to sit with it. This book reminded me of Laura Trujillo’s Stepping Back from the Ledge, and would be a compassionate companion to anyone navigating the complex terrain of suicide loss—especially the loss of a parent.

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You may never forget, but you can heal.

New York Times bestselling ghostwriter, Samantha Rose, steps out of the shadows to unravel the mystery surrounding her mother’s suicide. What begins as a solitary journey of grief shifts form when her mother slips back from the darkness beyond to reconcile her irreversible choice. Raw, deeply revealing, and with resilient humor throughout, Giving Up the Ghost explores the layered complexity of mental health, the love between mothers and daughters, and how, in the aftermath of inconceivable loss, we can release our inner ghosts and write a new story for ourselves.