Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity - Hardcover

It s a book everyone should read and there s no one who wouldn t be a more imaginative and understanding parent or human being for having done so. --Julie Myerson "The New York Times Book Review "

Solomon is a storyteller of great intimacy and ease He approaches each family s story thoughtfully, respectfully Bringing together their voices, Solomon creates something of enduring warmth and beauty: a quilt, a choir. --Kate Tuttle "The Boston Globe "

Solomon s first chapter, entitled Son, is as masterly a piece of writing as I ve come across all year. It combines his own story with a taut and elegant precis of this book s arguments. It is required reading This is a book that shoots arrow after arrow into your heart. --Dwight Garner "The New York Times "

A brave, beautiful book that will expand your humanity. --Anne Leslie "PEOPLE "

[Far from the Tree"] is a masterpiece of non-fiction, the culmination of a decade s worth of research and writing, and it should be required reading for psychologists, teachers, and above all, parents A bold and unambiguous call to redefine how we view difference A stunning work of scholarship and compassion. --Carmela Ciuraru "USA Today "

Deeply moving --Lisa Zeidner "The Washington Post "

A book of extraordinary ambition Part journalist, part psychology researcher, part sympathetic listener, Solomon s true talent is a geographic one: he maps the strange terrain of the human struggle that is parenting. --Brook Wilensky-Lanford "The San Francisco Cronicle "

Monumental Solomon has an extraordinary gift for finding his way into the relatively hermetic communities that form around conditions and gaining the confidence of the natives. --Lev Grossman "TIME "

Masterfully written and brilliantly researched Far from the Tree" stands apart from the countless memoirs and manuals about special needs parenting published in the last couple of decades. --Tina Calabro "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "

A careful, subtle, and surprising book. --Nathan Heller "The New Yorker "

A Scribner Classics edition of Andrew Solomon’s bestselling masterpiece, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Dayton Peace Prize, and one ofThe New York Times Book Review’s Ten Best Books of 2012—“a brave, beautiful book that will expand your humanity” (People).

Andrew Solomon’s startling proposition in Far From the Tree is that being exceptional is at the core of the human condition—that difference is what unites us. He writes about families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, or multiple severe disabilities; with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, who are transgender. While each of these characteristics is potentially isolating, the experience of difference within families is universal, and Solomon documents triumphs of love over prejudice in every chapter.

All parenting turns on a crucial question: to what extent should parents accept their children for who they are, and to what extent they should help them become their best selves. Drawing on ten years of research and interviews with more than three hundred families, Solomon mines the eloquence of ordinary people facing extreme challenges.

Elegantly reported by a spectacularly original and compassionate thinker, Far From the Tree explores how people who love each other must struggle to accept each other—a theme in every family’s life. The New York Timescalls it a “wise and beautiful” volume, that “will shake up your preconceptions and leave you in a better place.”