Sherman Alexie, suffering from depression, cancels his post-California book tour

Sherman Alexie, the author whose recent memoir “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me� chronicles his stormy relationship with his late mother, is canceling much of his book tour, citing a struggle with depression. Alexie will make appearances this week in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Menlo Park before heading home.

Alexie revealed his difficulties in a Facebook post Thursday. “I have been sobbing many times a day during this book tour,� Alexie wrote. “I have sobbed in private and I have sobbed onstage. I have been rebreaking my heart night after night. I have, to use recovery vocabulary, been retraumatizing myself.�

Alexie, whose other books include the short story collection “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven� and the young adult novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,� said he had been seeing signs of his mother, who died two years ago, at several stops on his book tour.

“As I write in the memoir, I don’t believe in ghosts, but I see them all the time,� he wrote in the Facebook post. “As I also write in the memoir, I don’t believe in magic, but I believe in interpreting coincidence exactly the way you want to.�

In an interview with The Times earlier this month, Alexie mentioned that he had seen several reminders of his mother on the tour, including in a quilt hanging in a hotel he was staying at in Boston.

“I assumed I would no longer have to deal with her and her judgment of me,� he said. “She continues to haunt me, even more so now.�

“She was sometimes cruel and often cold,� he wrote in his Facebook post. “I loved her, yes, but I sometimes hated her, too. She was brilliant, funny, beautiful, generous, vindictive, deceitful, tender, manipulative, abusive, loving, and intimidating.�

Alexie had previously canceled book tour appearances in Oklahoma and Montana while suffering a cold.

“But I also fell ill with depression,� he explained in his post. “I medicated my headcold. I quickly healed from that simple malady. But I couldn’t medicate my sadness — my complicated grief.�

Alexie is canceling all of his August appearances behind the book, and “many, but not all� of his events for the rest of the year.