Far from the Tree:
Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
by Andrew Solomon
is a nonfiction book about how families accommodate children
with physical, mental, and social disabilities and differences.
WINNER OF MORE THAN A DOZEN NATIONAL AWARDS
including The National Book Critics Circle Award, The Dayton Literary Peace Prize,
The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and The J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize
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.
Praise for
Far from the Tree
"I have seldom read a book that made me feel moral quandaries as intensely as this one...What undid me, again and again, was the radical humanity of these parents,
and their gratitude to and for children they never would have chosen."
--Kathryn Schulz, New York magazine
"That human beings are resilient in the face of extreme circumstances,
have a remarkable capacity to adapt, and summon the power of love to surmount daunting conditions are eternal truths made vivid in Solomon's Far from the Tree."
--Jerome Groopman, The New York Review of Books
"A brave, beautiful book that will expand your humanity."
--Anne Leslie, People
"A masterpiece of nonfiction, the culmination of a decade's worth of research and writing...It should be required reading for psychologists, teachers, and above all, parents....A bold and unambiguous call to redefine how we view difference."
--Carmela Ciuraru, USA Today
"A brilliant and humane examination of family and resilience and humility
and confusion and loyalty and difference and love...I want everyone to read it."
--Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love
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