Always Too Soon

October 9, 2006
For this compilation, Gilbert, a producer of CNN's American Morning,
interviewed 20 men and women—from the ordinary to celebrities like Ice-T and Yogi Berra—who have lost both parents. The collected short memoirs are all quite moving, though the interview style leads to some pedestrian prose. The contributors' experiences vary widely. Barbara Ehrenreich's father died of Alzheimer's; her mother's premature death may have been a suicide, and she discusses the sadness that overwhelmed her in contemplating her mother's unfulfilled life. In a tragic story, journalist Jeff Gelman tells how, when he was 14, his parents were killed by a drunk driver. Singer Shelby Lynne's father shot her mother and then turned the gun on himself when Lynne was a teenager. Catheryne Ilkovic Morgan's peaceful childhood in Czechoslovakia ended when the Nazis invaded and she subsequently lost both her parents at Auschwitz. Now 76, Morgan comments that time does not heal, but that her greatest joy is to see the future generation. These stories of bereavement and consolation will strike a chord with those who have lived through the deaths of one or both parents.

November 1, 2006
After losing her second parent in her mid-thirties, CNN producer Gilbert searched bookstores for accounts of other adult orphans. When she came up empty-handed, the seeds of this book were sown, as she began interviewing a wide variety of celebrities and regular people who lost parents to tragedies like the crash of TWA Flight 800, drunk driving, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Particularly evocative are the contributions from rapper/actor Ice-T, singer/songwriter Rosanne Cash, and social critic Barbara Ehrenreich. Included are selections by people who had difficult relationships with their parents, those who lost their parents as children, and some who candidly admit to having valued one parental relationship over the other. This often heart-wrenching collection of voices should provide the type of textual "support group" formerly absent from the literature of grief. Recommended for larger public and academic libraries.Elizabeth Brinkley, Seattle

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.