{"product_id":"dispatches-from-grief-a-mothers-journey-through-the-unthinkable","title":"Dispatches from Grief: A Mother's Journey Through the Unthinkable","description":"\n\u003ctable align=\"center\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"2\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\"\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"productDetailSmallElements\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eJacket Description\/Back\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A profound and powerful look into the human condition.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--David Brooks, New York Times columnist and bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Second Mountain\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \"Crittenden's words ring with truth, love, clarity, and courage.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author of \u003ci\u003eFar from the Tree\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Noonday Demon\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e -- \n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eOn a February morning, Danielle Crittenden's world cleaved in two: \u003c\/b\u003e the life before her daughter Miranda was found dead in her Brooklyn apartment, and the life after. In this luminous memoir, Crittenden maps the territory of profound loss with the clarity of a foreign correspondent filing reports from a country no parent ever wishes to visit. \n\u003cp\u003eWith unflinching honesty and unexpected grace, she chronicles not just the shattering impact of a child's death, but \u003cb\u003ethe strange afterlife of grief itself\u003c\/b\u003e--the way it infiltrates grocery stores and social media, transforms old friendships and forges new ones, and ultimately reshapes the mourner as fundamentally as it has reshaped the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eHere is grief in all its terrible specificity: \u003c\/b\u003e the police call that changes everything, the surreal task of choosing a burial dress, the well-meaning friends who offer advice about \"stages\" that don't exist. But here too is love in its most distilled form--a mother's meditation on a daughter who commanded dinner tables at twelve, who once interviewed Dick Cheney with a child's notebook, who transformed from a precocious girl into a sparkling young woman living her dreams in New York.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCrittenden brings a journalist's eye to the landscape of loss, coining the perfect term for those who try to explain grief to the grieving (\"griefsplaining\"), finding dark comedy in a hotel clerk's relentless cheerfulness, and discovering that C.S. Lewis told more truth about mourning in seventy-three pages than a library of self-help books. She writes of joining what she calls \"the alternative universe\"--parents who have lost children--and of the terrible wisdom its members share.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWritten with the narrative power that has made Crittenden one of our most incisive observers of family and culture, \u003c\/b\u003e \u003ci\u003eDispatches from Grief\u003c\/i\u003e stands as both a singular portrait of loss and a universal exploration of love's aftermath. It will speak to anyone who has loved deeply, lost profoundly, and wondered how to continue when continuation seems impossible.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFor those walking through their own valleys of grief, this book offers not false comfort but true companionship. For those who love someone who is grieving, it provides a window into a world that can only be understood from within. And for all readers, it serves as a reminder that our time with those we love is both more precious and more precarious than we dare imagine.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eBiographical Note\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDanielle Crittenden is a journalist, author, and former host of the podcast \n\u003ci\u003eThe Femsplainers\u003c\/i\u003e, known for her incisive and original commentary on women, family, and modern life. In addition to writing a popular monthly newsletter on Substack, her work has appeared in \n\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e, \n\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, \n\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e, \n\u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic\u003c\/i\u003e, and more. She is the author of four previous books, including \n\u003ci\u003eWhat Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman\u003c\/i\u003e, praised by Vanity Fair as the work of \"one of the most important new thinkers about women and family.\" Born in Toronto, she now lives in Washington, D.C. and Wellington, Ontario with her husband, journalist David Frum.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\" \n\u003ci\u003eDispatches from Grief\u003c\/i\u003e moves with the power of a freight train over rough terrain. Danielle Crittenden makes us eyewitnesses to the hour-by-hour crawl through grief. What I will remember forever is the transformation of the griever; the steady, unpredictable process of ripping and restitching; and the resilient enormity of a mother's love...Crittenden has been through hell, but has not emerged with empty hands.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--David Brooks, New York Times columnist and bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Second Mountain\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e \"Danielle Crittenden has written the book on losing a child--vivid, honest, and utterly without pretense. A companion for those who grieve, and a guide for those who want to help them.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Molly Jong-Fast, New York Times contributor and author of \u003ci\u003eHow to Lose Your Mother\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e \"Danielle Crittenden's writing is spare without being stark, her story desperate without being humorless, her attitude open-hearted without being banal. She captures kaleidoscopically what was remarkable about her daughter Miranda, weaving in the exquisite and often joyous dynamics of her family. Writing this book was an act of strength...Her words ring with truth, love, clarity, and courage.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author of \u003ci\u003eFar from the Tree\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Noonday Demon\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e \"Many of us move through our lives thinking we know what to expect, until a plot twist changes everything. Danielle Crittenden bravely takes us into this shattering: the sudden death of her daughter Miranda at thirty-one. \n\u003ci\u003eDispatches from Grief\u003c\/i\u003e is about how we find our way into this new story, not by \"moving on,\" but by learning how to remain present when loss becomes permanent--and how honesty, rather than optimism, is what makes that endurance possible.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eMaybe You Should Talk to Someone\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e \"Maternal love is at the heart of Crittenden's book. From descriptions of holding Miranda's hand as a toddler to texting her from across the country. Smothering her with kisses when she was little, again after her brain surgery and the last time as she lay on a gurney in the funeral home....In a stunningly honest way, Crittenden describes the overwhelming grief that led her to therapy and her efforts to \"live again.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e-- \n\u003cb\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e \"Having read many books about grief, I found Danielle Crittenden's \n\u003ci\u003eDispatches from Grief\u003c\/i\u003e to be something rare. After her daughter's sudden death, she writes with raw emotion and uncommon literary skill that ultimately instructs us. We take the journey from devastation to transformation alongside her, learning--and feeling--every step of the way...What this beautiful book reminds us is that bonds of love can continue forever, but in a new way. No closure required.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Pauline Boss, Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota; author of \u003ci\u003eAmbiguous Loss\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Myth of Closure\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e \"This is a book about the worst thing that you can imagine: the death of a child. You can't prepare for it, you can't anticipate it; you can only try, afterwards, to make sense of it. Danielle Crittenden does this with grace and clarity, explaining how it is possible to go on living in an altered world. Grief is the price we pay for love, and so this is a book about love as well--how it endures, how it transforms, how it refuses to let go. Readers will find consolation, hope, and insight, as well as sadness and sorrow.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of \u003ci\u003eGulag\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eTwilight of Democracy\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eAutocracy, Inc.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e \"A little masterpiece. I was pulled through in one voracious sitting, moved by every line. \n\u003ci\u003eDispatches from Grief\u003c\/i\u003e joins the literary canon of great books about mourning and the search for solace.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Tina Brown, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Vanity Fair Diaries\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Palace Papers\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e \"Danielle Crittenden and David Frum endured the ultimate nightmare: losing a beloved, bursting-with-life daughter. Danielle's account is unsparing, vivid, and harrowing, a mother's howl of pain that, in the final pages, mercifully reaches a kind of diminuendo and becomes a canticle of maternal love.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Christopher Buckley, author of \u003ci\u003eThank You for Smoking\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Judge Hunter\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e \"Stunning, beautiful, and true on every page, \n\u003ci\u003eDispatches from Grief\u003c\/i\u003e takes us on a journey through the unimaginable heartbreak of a parent and a family. Nothing is sugarcoated; nothing is wished or reasoned away. And yet, what emerges is a portal into the most enduring realities of our lives--that all we really have is each other, that family is everything, and that memories sustain us. The most moving and important book I've read in years.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Robert Kurson, New York Times bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eShadow Divers\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eRocket Men\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e \"Danielle Crittenden does something grief writers rarely do. She tells the truth. All of it. As a fellow exile in the land of grief, I found tears falling--then laughing out loud at a phrase--then that deep, coarse crying only grievers know. It was a good cry: my grief bowing to hers. Danielle has given us the gift of knowing her daughter Miranda. And then she gives us something more: how, when she was ready, she began to make Miranda's life more important than her death. Not healed. Something other. Something that inspires rather than deadens. I am grateful to Danielle and Miranda. I am grateful for this book.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Jan Warner, author of \u003ci\u003eGrief Day by Day\u003c\/i\u003e and founder of Grief Speaks Out\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e \"The author's pain is unvarnished--Crittenden writes about her state of shock with scant yet emotive prose...A moving and intimate expression of pain.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e \"This beautiful book is, above all, a love story. Danielle Crittenden's undying love for her daughter lights the way through the labyrinth of grief, making it possible for the rest of us to follow her down the dark and winding paths. It's here that we come to meet a beautiful, brilliant girl named Miranda, whose memory her mother shepherds--capturing her wit and kindness and glamour, mixing touches of gentle humor with fathomless sorrow. A luminous and highly original memoir, \n\u003ci\u003eDispatches from Grief\u003c\/i\u003e is also a final act of mothering.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Abigail Tucker, New York Times bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Lion in the Living Room\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eMom Genes\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher Marketing\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn a February morning, Danielle Crittenden's world cleaved in two: the life before her daughter Miranda was found dead in her Brooklyn apartment, and the life after. \u003cb\u003eWith unflinching honesty and unexpected grace, she chronicles the shattering impact of a child's death and the strange afterlife of grief itself: how it infiltrates grocery stores and dinner parties, transforms friendships, and ultimately reshapes the mourner as fundamentally as the world.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere is grief in all its terrible specificity: the police call that changes everything, the surreal task of choosing a burial dress, the well-meaning friends who \"griefsplain.\" But here too is love distilled: a mother's meditation on a daughter who commanded dinner tables at twelve, who interviewed Dick Cheney with a child's notebook, who transformed into a luminous young woman living her dreams in New York. She writes of joining \"the world's worst club\"--parents who have lost children--and the terrible wisdom its members share.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWritten with the narrative power that has made Crittenden one of our most incisive observers of family and culture, \u003ci\u003eDispatches from Grief\u003c\/i\u003e brings a journalist's eye to the landscape of loss. \u003cb\u003eFor those walking through grief, for those who love someone grieving, and for all who dare imagine how precious and precarious our time together is, this book stands as both singular portrait and universal truth.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations:\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"italic\"\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/span\u003e 03\/01\/2026 (EAN 9781964378114, Hardcover)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003c\/table\u003e\n","brand":"Infinite Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51496128151830,"sku":"9781964378114","price":33.54,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0857\/9910\/8886\/files\/9781964378114.jpg?v=1783053623","url":"https:\/\/lusper.myshopify.com\/products\/dispatches-from-grief-a-mothers-journey-through-the-unthinkable","provider":"Lusperbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}