Each has been through hurts and suffering, and while Tallie shares the pain of her husband’s betrayal and subsequent divorce, Emmett keeps his past largely to himself, hiding the source of his desperation and suicidal impulses, and even hiding his true identity. The book shifts point-of-view between Tallie and Emmett, and through their alternating chapters, we learn about the events in their lives that brought them both to this particular moment. They each also cross boundaries, aware of infringing on the other’s privacy but somehow justifying this through good intentions. Over the course of their time together, each slowly opens up to the other, but at their own pace, and keeping secrets even while sharing hopes, fears, and past hurts. She doesn’t approach Emmett as a therapist, although she is one - instead, she offers caring and compassion, as well as shelter and a safe space. When Tallie sees a man poised to jump off a bridge, she immediately tries to intervene, gently using her words and music to encourage him back from the brink, then continuing to provide companionship and support in the hours and days that follow. In this moving, surprising, dual-narrator novel, we meet two damaged souls who find solace and hope through their accidental meeting. But what she doesn’t realize is that he’s not the only one who needs healing - and she’s not the only one with secrets.Īlternating between Tallie and Emmett’s perspectives as they inch closer to the truth of what brought Emmett to the bridge’s edge - as well as the hard truths Tallie has been grappling with in her own life - This Close to Okay is a vibrant, powerful story of two strangers brought together by wild chance at the moment they needed each other most. Over the course of the emotionally charged weekend that follows, Tallie makes it her mission to provide a safe space for Emmett, though she hesitates to confess that this is also her day job. She convinces the man to join her for a cup of coffee, and he eventually agrees to come back to her house, where he finally shares his name: Emmett.
Without a second thought, Tallie pulls over and jumps out of the car into the pouring rain. On a rainy October night in Kentucky, recently divorced therapist Tallie Clark is on her way home from work when she spots a man precariously standing on the side of a bridge.
From the award-winning Southern writer who Roxane Gay calls “a consummate storyteller” comes a cathartic novel about the life-changing weekend shared between two strangers: a therapist and the man she prevents from ending his life.
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