All the Way to the River

Love, Loss, and Liberation

Author Elizabeth Gilbert On Tour
$18.99 US
Penguin Adult HC/TR | Riverhead Books
On sale Sep 09, 2025 | 9780593541005
Sales rights: US, Canada, Open Mkt

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What if your most beautiful love story turned into your biggest nightmare? An essential, universally resonant new memoir from the #1 bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and Big Magic.

Twenty years ago, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love inspired millions of readers to embark upon their own journeys of self-discovery. A decade later, Big Magic empowered countless others to live their most creative lives. Now comes another landmark book—about love and loss, addiction and recovery, grief and liberation.

In 2000, a friend sent Liz to see a new hairdresser named Rayya Elias. An intense and unlikely curiosity sparked between these two apparent opposites: Rayya, an East Village badass who lived boldly on her own terms but feared she was a failed artist; Liz, a married people-pleaser with a surprisingly unfettered sense of creativity. Over the years, they became friends, then best friends, then inseparable. When tragedy entered their lives, the truth was finally laid bare: The two were in love. Unacknowledged: they were also a pair of addicts, on a collision course toward catastrophe.

What if the love of your life—and the person you most trusted in the world—became a danger to your sanity and wellbeing? What if the dear friend who taught you so much about your self-destructive tendencies became the unstable partner with whom you disastrously reenacted every one of them? And what if your most devastating heartbreak opened a pathway to your greatest awakening?

All the Way to the River is for everyone who has ever been captive to love – or to any other passion, substance, or craving—and who yearns, at long last, for peace and freedom.
Praise for All the Way to The River:

“Inspiring account…Gilbert achieves her signature intimacy through a bluntly confessional tone… and an admirable ability to stare darkness in the face without losing hope. Readers struggling with addiction or seeking a path through heartbreak will find invaluable wisdom in these pages.”Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Gilbert rips open her life to share all the painful moments and grief … in a story of despair and courage that … must have been unimaginable to write… Fans of her more lighthearted memoir and novels may be shocked by this book’s intensity, but it’s a brave story with an ultimately hopeful outcome. Anyone who has faced addiction—or loved someone who has—will recognize and be moved by Gilbert’s journey.” Booklist, Starred Review

“The author of the world’s most famous memoir returns to the form to tell the story of a great love….A worthy addition to the literature of addiction and recovery, charming and harrowing by turns.” – Kirkus

About

What if your most beautiful love story turned into your biggest nightmare? An essential, universally resonant new memoir from the #1 bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and Big Magic.

Twenty years ago, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love inspired millions of readers to embark upon their own journeys of self-discovery. A decade later, Big Magic empowered countless others to live their most creative lives. Now comes another landmark book—about love and loss, addiction and recovery, grief and liberation.

In 2000, a friend sent Liz to see a new hairdresser named Rayya Elias. An intense and unlikely curiosity sparked between these two apparent opposites: Rayya, an East Village badass who lived boldly on her own terms but feared she was a failed artist; Liz, a married people-pleaser with a surprisingly unfettered sense of creativity. Over the years, they became friends, then best friends, then inseparable. When tragedy entered their lives, the truth was finally laid bare: The two were in love. Unacknowledged: they were also a pair of addicts, on a collision course toward catastrophe.

What if the love of your life—and the person you most trusted in the world—became a danger to your sanity and wellbeing? What if the dear friend who taught you so much about your self-destructive tendencies became the unstable partner with whom you disastrously reenacted every one of them? And what if your most devastating heartbreak opened a pathway to your greatest awakening?

All the Way to the River is for everyone who has ever been captive to love – or to any other passion, substance, or craving—and who yearns, at long last, for peace and freedom.

Praise

Praise for All the Way to The River:

“Inspiring account…Gilbert achieves her signature intimacy through a bluntly confessional tone… and an admirable ability to stare darkness in the face without losing hope. Readers struggling with addiction or seeking a path through heartbreak will find invaluable wisdom in these pages.”Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Gilbert rips open her life to share all the painful moments and grief … in a story of despair and courage that … must have been unimaginable to write… Fans of her more lighthearted memoir and novels may be shocked by this book’s intensity, but it’s a brave story with an ultimately hopeful outcome. Anyone who has faced addiction—or loved someone who has—will recognize and be moved by Gilbert’s journey.” Booklist, Starred Review

“The author of the world’s most famous memoir returns to the form to tell the story of a great love….A worthy addition to the literature of addiction and recovery, charming and harrowing by turns.” – Kirkus