One morning, Mel Toews put on his coat and hat, walked out of town, and took his own life. A loving husband and father, faithful member of the Mennonite church and immensely popular schoolteacher, he was a pillar of his close-knit community. Yet after a lifetime of struggle, he could no longer face the darkness that clouded his world as a result of his bipolar personality. In Swing Low, his daughter Miriam Toews, an acclaimed novelist and reporter, recounts her father’s life as she imagines he would have told it, in his own voice, right up to the day of his final walk. A gracefully written and compassionate recounting of a man’s battle with depression in a small Mennonite community, Swing Low is a moving meditation on illness, family, faith, and love.