Elizabeth Gilbert, the bestselling author whose memoir Eat Pray Love inspired a global movement and a Hollywood film, has ignited fierce backlash with the release of her latest book, All the Way to the River.
The memoir, which is this month's choice for Oprah's Book Club, chronicles her turbulent relationship with musician and writer Rayya Elias and has been condemned by Elias’s family as “exploitative” for profiting from her death.
According to The New York Post, Gilbert and Elias first met in 2000, long before Gilbert’s breakout success. After Eat Pray Love made Gilbert a household name—selling 18 million copies and spending 187 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller list—she reportedly gifted Elias a home so she could write her own memoir, Harley Loco.
But in 2016, their friendship shifted when Elias was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Gilbert left her husband, Jose Nunes—the man she famously met in Bali and later married—to confess her love for Elias.
In All the Way to the River, Gilbert details how she and Elias quickly became a couple, even holding a commitment ceremony. She also admits to enabling Elias’s drug relapse, supplying her with cocaine, helping her inject heroin, and registering as a drug user to obtain needles.
Gilbert writes candidly about self-medicating as well, using Xanax, Ambien, mushrooms, MDMA, and marijuana while caring for Elias.
Perhaps most shocking is Gilbert’s admission that she planned Elias’s murder. “I came very close to premeditatedly and cold-bloodedly murdering my partner,” Gilbert writes, explaining that she intended to disguise sleeping pills as morphine.
Her rationale, she claims, was that Elias had withdrawn affection, and she was “extremely tired.” The plan was abandoned when Elias grew suspicious.
The memoir further alleges Gilbert abandoned Elias during her decline, at one point cutting off contact and leaving her homeless. Elias moved in with an ex, who got her sober under medical supervision. Gilbert later reconnected with her, visiting until she died in 2018 at age 57.
Seven years later, Gilbert frames the memoir as part of her recovery through 12-step programs. She claims Elias’s spirit “visited” her after death, urging her to tell the story.
But Elias’s sister disagrees, telling The New York Times, “We all knew from Day 1 that a book was going to be written and money was going to be made out of my sister’s death. To me, Rayya should not be on display.”
Gilbert’s All the Way to the River is out now, topping Amazon’s self-help charts and already optioned for a film.