Support groups are now forming nationwide in response to Always Too Soon. Click here to learn more about Parentless Parents.

For a look at Allison's schedule, please go to allisongilbert.com.

"This book is a comfort to anyone who has ever lost a parent. In 2000, I lost my father, and two years later, I lost my mother. I was lucky to have them with me into my fifties. Others aren't so fortunate, but all endure... Each story here eloquently captures the heart of loss. The lessons, forged from sorrow and eventual acceptance, are invaluable and intensely real."

-- Senator John Kerry

"I wish I'd had a copy of Always Too Soon after my own parents died. To find oneself orphaned in middle age is a curious thing: You feel deserving of only the mildest form of sympathy, yet privately the sorrow is deep. The stories in Allison Gilbert's new book offer proof that no matter how old we are when we lose our parents, it is a singular kind of grief. The essays reveal how others have made their way into the new life that each of us must construct for ourselves once we are no longer anyone's daughter or son."

-- Caitlin Flanagan, author of To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife

"The collected short memoirs are all quite moving... and will strike a chord with those who have lived through the deaths of one or both parents."

 

-- Publishers Weekly

"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."

                                                                      -- Library Journal

"Take this book and treat it like a friend. Spend time with the people in it; you can read it in private, reread it, cry, remember, mourn, wrap yourself in your own memories triggered by something someone else has expressed. You will undoubtedly continue to find comfort in the lives, courage, and determination of the people you meet in this book long after you have put it down."

-- Lois F. Akner, C.S.W.,
author of How to Survive the Loss of a Parent

"Readers who have lost both parents, and those anticipating such a loss, will find hope and comfort in these moving stories."

-- J. William Worden, Ph.D.,
author of Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy, Psychologist, Harvard Medical School