RARE BIRD : A Memoir of Loss and Love

For readers of To Heaven And Back by Mary Neil, a mother's story of tenacity in the face of sudden, unfathomable loss, and her surprising encounters with the supernatural on her journey to healing and hope.

Out of seeming nowhere on a September day, 12-year-old Jack is swept away in a freak flood from his neighborhood, his family and life itself. It's a story that captures regional headlines and stirs up a huge web-based "extended family" that make the story and what comes after their own. Left to wrestle with the awful questions—How did it happen? Why? What ever now?--is Jack's mother, younger sister, and dad. They each fall into the abyss of grief in different ways. They each, in the days and months ahead, find their faltering way toward something like peace and healing. Anna unfolds her story with telling detail, beautiful evocations of love and longing, and the power of a woman who has not only survived the unimaginable but returned to make her testament of hope--that after all, nothing can separate a mother from her child. Anna Whiston-Donaldson is popular blogger: www.aninchofgray.blogspot.com. She enjoys a significant online following (300,000 page views per month on her blog, "An Inch of Gray.”