KNOW THE NIGHT

Maria Mutch's soul-stirring memoir centers on a two-year period during which her son, Gabriel - who is severely autistic, non-verbal, and has Down Syndrome - was nearly always avake.

For the author, it was a time of enormous challenge as well as deep introspection. Simultaneously she became fascinated with Antarctic explorer Admiral Richard Byrd, whose famous story of living alone for five months in the South Pole she recounts and re-imagines. In the three main characters—mother, son, adventuring explorer—Mutch triangulates a multiplicity of overlapping and layered themes that enlighten and uplift one another. She locates the powerful voids, ciphers, and blanknesses that terrify the mind, but that actually give definition to our lives, because it is against and through them that we communicate messages of care and love. She shows how extremely and unquestionably a mother will seek out her child. Maria Mutch, who holds a BFA from York University, began her writing career auspiciously in the 1990s, receiving a Toronto Arts Council Writers Grant and a finalist's citation in the Canadian National Magazine Awards.