Nineteen years ago, Elizabeth Gilbert changed the lives of millions of readers with her inspiring and uplifting memoir, Eat, Pray, Love. Now, she's releasing a brand new memoir, and she's not hold anything back.
Gilbert's new book boasts the same beautiful writing and intimate storytelling that readers have come to expect, but anyone looking for a story of self-love and fulfillment is bound to be disappointed. The story Gilbert has to tell in All the Way to the River, due out September 9, is anything but.
Over the years, Gilbert's made no secret of her often unpredictable personal life, sharing glimpses of her relationships on social media. In 2017, she shared that she had left her husband, having fallen in love with her longtime friend and hairdresser, Rayya Elias. Tragically, Elias had been diagnosed with cancer, and the prognosis felt cruel; doctors gave her an estimated six months to live.
In Gilbert's new book, the bestselling author admits to the brutally honest truth that though all seemed hopeful and optimistic to fans on the outside looking in, the reality was far from it. When Elias and Gilbert first met, Elias was a heroin addict in recovery, and in the aftermath of her devastating diagnosis, addiction drew her right back in.
The pain and suffering from living with and trying to fight cancer led Elias back to opioids, not as an addict in search of a fix, but as a cancer patient desperate for any sort of relief.
"'Let the dragon roll one more time,' she said when she finally put that first morphine pill in her mouth," Gilbert writes in her new memoir. "And indeed the dragon rolled itself awake. The dragon opened its yellow eyes and lifted its leathery, powerful wings and flew on silent gusts through Rayya’s bloodstream. And instantly, magically, my beloved’s suffering was erased – just as her suffering had always been erased by opioids."
Elias didn't stick to morphine. She began taking a variety of substances, including marijuana, cocaine, alcohol, and fentanyl. It wasn't long until Elias was transformed in the way that addiction tends to do, becoming paranoid and abusive.
For Gilbert, the effects of Elias's relapse were devastating. She confessed to self-medicating with drugs and alcohol, afraid in her own home and exhausted by the entire situation. It was then that she began to consider the unthinkable.
Gilbert began to believe that the only way to protect herself and to end their collective suffering was by taking Elias's life, partially out of mercy, partially out of self-preservation.
"I stole some of her sleeping pills and morphine pills and took them to the park with me," writes Gilbert. "While my fellow New Yorkers went about their business in the beautiful summer light, I sat on a bench, studying and comparing the two medications in the palm of my hand, trying to figure out how I could make the sleeping pills look like the morphine pills so I could trick her into taking a bunch of them."
While Elias may have been in altered state, she knew her partner well. She called Gilbert out on her plan, though she didn't know the details. It was Elias's ability to see through her, to acknowledge the elephant in the room, that led Gilbert to change her mind.
However, the guilt was great, and Gilbert would have to live with that for quite some time.
“I'm the nice lady who wrote ‘Eat, Pray, Love,’ and I’m out in the park with fentanyl and morphine and sleeping pills trying to craft a murder,” Gilbert told The New York Times. She knew that the only way forward was to write, and so she did.
All the Way to the River will be released on September 9, 2025 by Penguin Random House.
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