In twelve astonishingly acute and compassionate chapters, Andrew Solomon tells stories of individuals who have been heartbreakingly tragic victims of intense prejudices—but also stories of parents who have embraced their children’s differences and tried to alter the world’s understanding of their conditions. Solomon’s humanity and erudition—and the eloquence he discovers in the voices of his subjects—are show-stopping.
While each of the categories he explores in Far from the Tree ($35.50) is narrow, together they compose an aggregate of millions whose struggles toward integrated identity are heightened versions of a universal experience. The courageous and profoundly affirming stories of many of these families point a way for all of us to expand our definition of the human family. This is a book that will rattle our prejudices, question our policies, and inspire our understanding of the relationship between illness and identity. Above all, it will renew and deepen our gratitude for the herculean reach of parental love—and expand our own reach too.
Andrew Solomon is the author of The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost, A Stone Boat, and The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, winner of fourteen national awards, including the 2001 National Book Award, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and a New York Times bestseller, now published in twenty-two languages. He lives in New York and London with his husband and children.