One Sunny Afternoon by Rowan Jetté Knox
CBC News | Posted: August 21, 2023 6:59 AM | Last Updated: October 19, 2023
A deeply personal memoir about facing life-long trauma head on, and bravely healing the scars that endure.
For writer and human rights advocate Rowan Jetté Knox (formerly known as Amanda Jetté Knox), the inspiring story of their family's journey of love and acceptance, when both their child and partner came out as transgender one after the other, was the hopeful beginning to their new lives. Their tale, shared in Jetté Knox's memoir Love Lives Here and embraced by readers everywhere, quickly found its way to the top of bestseller lists.
Yet in the spring of 2020, Jetté Knox began to experience targeted attacks on social media and they soon became the subject of a small but very vocal group that criticized their book's success and their advocacy work. The intensity of the backlash grew and drove them to contemplate suicide. But instead of taking their life, on one sunny afternoon, they went to the hospital to seek help.
One Sunny Afternoon is a searing testament to Rowan Jetté Knox's extraordinary reckoning with their past and present to find hope in their future. Triggered by the online harassment, they wade through their personal history and detail the incidents of violence, addiction and sexual assault that have haunted them. When Jetté Knox eventually receives a complex trauma disorder diagnosis and dedicates themself to recovery, they emerge with newfound strength, resiliency and confidence.
One Sunny Afternoon is a profoundly moving and candid account of how trauma can shape us rather than define us, and reveals how even in our darkest moments—and on our most hopeless days—light can find its way in.
(From Viking)
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Rowan Jetté Knox is a Toronto-based journalist, writer and human rights advocate. His #1 bestselling memoir, Love Lives Here: A Story of Thriving in a Transgender Family was chosen for the Canada Reads 2020 longlist in 2020.