All the Way to the River

Elizabeth Gilbert met Rayya Elias in the early 2000s when Rayya was her hairdresser in New York, and the friendship became the closest of Gilbert's life. In 2016, Rayya was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic and liver cancer, and Gilbert left her marriage to be with Rayya for the 18 months she had left. All the Way to the River covers the diagnosis, the choice to be together, the slow approach to the end, the addiction relapses that returned alongside the dying, and the years of grief Gilbert lived inside after Rayya's death. The book is the most direct bedside memoir Gilbert has written.