Danielle Crittenden with Andrew Solomon: Dispatches from Grief

Journalist Danielle Crittenden joins writer Andrew Solomon for a conversation about her journey living through every parent’s worst fear — and her new memoir, Dispatches from Grief: A Mother’s Journey Through the Unthinkable, “a little masterpiece [that] joins the literary canon of great books about mourning and the search for solace” (Tina Brown).

On 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. In her new memoir, she maps the territory of profound loss with the clarity of a foreign correspondent filing reports from a country no parent ever wishes to visit. Dispatches from Grief stands as both a singular portrait of this loss and a universal exploration of its aftermath.

Hear Crittenden as she discusses, with unflinching honesty and grace, both the shattering impact of a child’s death and the strange afterlife of grief itself — the way it infiltrates our daily lives, transforms old friendships and forges new ones, and ultimately reshapes the mourner as fundamentally as it has reshaped the world.

“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.” — Molly Jong-Fast

“Dispatches from Grief moves with the power of a freight train over rough terrain. Danielle Crittenden makes us eyewitnesses to the hour-by-hour crawl through grief.” — David Brooks