On Choosing the Title "The Last Caravan"
- Anna Byrne
- Dec 3
- 2 min read
Thank you to everyone who has pre-ordered "The Last Caravan." If you are buying a copy as a ✨Holiday Gift,✨ please let me know if you would like a personalized gift card sent to the recipient.
I thought it would be interesting to share how I arrived at the title for this book. For most of the two and a half years I was writing it, the working title was "The Community-Supported Dying of Mary Morgan." That’s exactly what the book is about, after all. But while at the beginning it felt only right to have Mary’s name on the cover, throughout the process, I kept hearing her voice in my head. It was a particular phrase that she would repeat about her experience of dying in community: “It’s not about me, it’s about us.” By us, she meant her friends, family and the dying team, but also the wider human "us." She was adamant that her story was just one example of what is possible at the end of life, adaptable within each person’s experiences, desires, resources and social realities. She believed that the right to die in community is enshrined in our humanity, and she wanted her story to speak to as many people as possible. I began to consider how the title could reflect this.
Then, in the editing phase, one of the beta readers suggested that the book begin with the circumstances of my life that had called me to write Mary’s story. That advice led me to re-write the prologue to include my own cancer diagnosis. At the same time, I decided to open and close the book with a travelling theme. Mary sometimes referred to herself as a vagabonda, a journeyer or traveller. Throughout her life, she hopped freight trains, hitchhiked and crossed time zones and international borders. In the last few years of her life, due to her diagnosis and COVID, her quest turned inward. Whether leaving home for the first time at the age of seventeen or deciding to die on her own terms, journeying was at the heart of Mary’s life. And, as we all know, for Mary, the voyage was about people. To capture this theme, I changed the title to "The Last Caravan." The book begins with this definition:
Caravan:
-A company of travellers, bound by mutual protection, crossing difficult lands in order to deliver precious goods.
-A group of people journeying towards a common destination.
-A pilgrimage of friends.
Most nonfiction books have a short, somewhat poetic title followed by a subtitle that clearly explains the theme, and so the final title became: "The Last Caravan: The Power of Community at the End of Life."
You can order the book from the publisher, Caitlin Press, or from a bookstore near you: https://caitlinpress.com/Books/T/The-Last-Caravan (just click “Shop local bookstores” to order from a shop in your area). For folks in qathet, call Pocket Books (604-414-8222) or Oceanside Books & Games (604-489-3028).
Wishing you all a peaceful December,
Anna
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