All In: Kate Fagan's 'What Made Maddy Run’ a deep, relatable tale of a college athlete's suicide

When your family history includes struggles with depression, it’s hard to talk or write about it.

Kate Fagan’s non-fiction book "What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teenager" is a former New York Times’ No. 1 bestseller about the suicide of an Ivy League student/athlete.

Fagan is the former ESPN columnist, feature writer and “Around the Horn” broadcast journalist who excelled in basketball at Niskayuna High School and at the University of Colorado. Fagan left ESPN in 2018 to concentrate on family and pursue other career interests.

“What Made Maddy Run” is — within the context of this column that supports women in sports journalism and in sports generally — a book that I recommend.  But to write about this book, it’s critical for me to open up about the impact of suicide on my family. It’s not easy; I’ve rewritten this column several times.

Fagan’s book, released in the fall of 2017, tells the story of Madison Holleran, a distance runner who died in 2014 when she jumped off a rooftop of a parking garage near the University of Pennsylvania, where she was a freshman at the prestigious school. Fagan also struggled with her own mental health while she was in college in the early 2000s, and she adeptly weaves in her experiences as she peels back Madison’s story.