From Andrew Solomon, the National Book Award-winning author of The Noonday Demon, comes Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity. Culled from ten years of research on different kinds of exceptional children and 40,000 pages of interview transcripts from conversations with more than 300 families across America, Far From the Tree examines extreme versions of the profound difference that all parents and children feel from one another. Solomon tells stories of children 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 transformative. Together, the categories he explores compose an aggregate of millions whose struggles 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 and to increase tolerance. Far From the Tree 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. Andrew Solomon is the author of the novel 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.