“And when every­thing should be quiet/​your fire fights to burn a riv­er of sleep.…” So begins Michael Greenberg’s poet­ic account of his daugh­ter Sally’s descent into bipo­lar dis­or­der. Green­berg, whose ini­tial reac­tions are main­ly denial and agony, trav­els the com­plex road to Sally’s recov­ery with the help of his wife, Pat; Sally’s bio­log­i­cal moth­er, Robin; and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers. We meet oth­er inmates on Sally’s psy­chi­atric ward, includ­ing a Hasidic patient so obsessed with his stud­ies that he believes he is con­stant­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ing with G‑d and a clas­sics pro­fes­sor again return­ing to the ward for his chem­i­cal ​“mal­let to the brain.” Attempt­ing to under­stand Sal­ly as well as his men­tal­ly ill broth­er, Steve, Green­berg grad­u­al­ly comes to accept this par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant jour­ney that patients and their fam­i­lies must for­ev­er tra­verse through real­i­ty and tran­scen­dence. Hur­ry Down Sun­shine is a lit­er­ate, deeply per­son­al account of a father’s swirling gallery of reac­tions to a daughter’s men­tal illness.