Rita Moir’s mother and sister underwent heart surgery in the same week; a year later her sister was dead and her elderly mother lived many more years. Not of Reason: A Recipe for Outrunning Sadness is a family memoir centred on the deaths of the author’s sister and mother and the final restoration of what is considered “the natural order.”

Encouraged by her mother to “opt for joy,” Moir remained grounded within her rural BC community in the Slocan Valley, becoming deeply involved in everything from her local community hall to seniors housing and her local burial society, while continuing to travel to Minnesota to help her sister and mother. Moir’s journalist’s eye for detail brings sharp clarity to this beautiful and contemplative work, from the almost unbearable story of her sister’s difficult death, to digging in her garden, learning to dance and training her dog, to a day of glory and majesty near her brother’s home on the Bay of Fundy. The movement between urban and rural life creates what award-winning memoirist Patricia Hampl describes as “a kind of musical movement, allegro/andante…beautiful, hard won, finely achieved…it took my breath away.”

In Not of Reason, award-winning writer Rita Moir explores her intense love for her sister with unwavering honesty, and wrestles with the alluring solace of religion when the natural order is knocked out of alignment. As Moir grows stronger, finding her own kind of peace and joy, the natural order, as always, restores itself.