In the News: Press | Reviews | Praise | Audio | Video
Press
| From Tragedy to Art: Meaning-Making, Personal Narrative, and Life's Adversities June 18, 2010 Life as Art |
||
| Mother's Suicide Propels Psychiatrist on a Mission May 21, 2010 Psychiatric News Members in the News feature |
Writer's Voice with Francesca Rheannon May 19, 2010 Memoirs of Suicide feature article with audio |
|
| skirt! Boston May 18, 2010 Interview |
Marie Claire |
|
| Harvard Gazette May 13, 2010 Nancy Rappaport wins book award |
American Journal of Psychiatry Residents Journal May 2010 Interview by Ruth Gerson, M.D. [pdf] |
|
| AACAP News March/April 2010 |
||
| CNN Health March 11, 2010 How to save a friend from the brink |
Massachusetts Report on Nursing (MARN) Newsletter March 2010 Other Mothers (p.17) |
|
| The Improper Bostonian A Dark Mystery: The shadowlands of a mother's life and death Mopsy Strange Kennedy |
Basil & Spice: Views on Life March 8, 2010 Stigma, Secrets, Suicide: The Silent Grief of Families |
|
Betty Confidential |
Patriot Ledger.com February 22, 2010 |
|
 Tufts MedicineWinter 2010 Long Time Gone A daughter plumbs the mystery of her mother's suicide in 1963 |
NAMI Advocate Winter 2010 The Complicated Nature of Loss: One Suicide Survivor Shares Her Story |
|
| Clinical Psychiatry News February 2010 Providing Comfort After Suicide |
PsychCentral February 2010 Kids and Depression: Parents' Call to Action Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |
|
| The Winsor School Notable Alumnae Nancy Rappaport '78 |
Connecticut Style: Book Lovers January 7, 2010 WTNH-TV Video Interview |
|
| American Association of Suicidology Janaury 2010 “Love Lasts Longer than Death” – An Interview with Dr. Nancy Rappaport |
Wicked Local: Wellesley December 27, 2009 Psychiatrist who lost mother to suicide to speak about new book at Wellesley library |
|
| KevinMD.com December 11, 2009 Doctors need to take care of themselves, for their patients’ sake |
The Wall Street Journal December 7, 2009 Recommended Reading for a Healthy New Year |
|
| Bereaved by Suicide November 2009 Excerpt from In Her Wake |
Harvard Focus November 6, 2009 The Fall Bookshelf |
|
| Wicked Local Cambridge November 6, 2009 Cambridge psychiatrist explores roots of suicide in new book |
Wicked Local: Concord Journal October 23, 2009 Book offers perspective on suicide |
|
| Forum Network video: Harvard Bookstore Reading October 16, 2009 In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores Her Mother's Suicide |
Tufts E-News October 14, 2009 The Power of Reflection |
|
| Newsweek online October 14, 2009 Pat Wingert and Barbara Kantrowitz: "Her Mother Killed Herself" |
Webhealing.com October 2009 Articles on Grief and Healing: Excerpt from In Her Wake |
|
| Boston Globe October 11, 2009 In Her Wake, #9 Boston Globe Bestseller List, October 11-17, 2009 |
The Bay State Banner October 8, 2009 Boston Scenes: Local and Culturally Relevant Events this week |
|
| Jungle Red Writers:
Writing well is the best revenge October 7, 2009 In Her Wake --- A Memoir and a Mystery |
Boston Globe September 21, 2009 In the wake of a suicide |
|
| Boston Magazine September 19, 2009 Dr. Nancy Rappaport's Books Release Reception |
Somerville Journal September 11, 2009 Somerville launches youth mental health and suicide prevention campaign |
|
| The Nantucket Independent September 9, 2009 Harvard psychiatry professor writes book on mother's suicide |
Harvard Gazette. September 3, 2009 Child psychiatrist pens her past 'In Her Wake' reveals an extraordinary mother and a devastating suicide |
|
| <top |
Reviews
The American Journal of Psychiatry
July 2010
In Her Wake review
"Much like a watercolor painting, the family comes to life in this book as details are learned and feelings expressed. ... There is much to appreciate here in terms of grief and loss and the value of knowing about one's family."
skirt! Boston
May 17, 2010
In Her Wake review
"This book is incredible triumph in terms of how it makes you recognize that no family is perfect, parents inevitably make mistakes along the way, but in the end, the love they have for one another can overcome anything."
Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
April 2010
Review of In Her Wake by Roberta J. Apfel, MD, MPH
“In Her Wake is a courageous, compassion- ate, and thoroughly researched memoir..."
The Carlat Psychiatry Blog
January 27, 2010
Review by Dr. Daniel J. Carlat
"There's really so much more to this book than I would have predicted. I highly recommend it."
Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
January 2010
Review
by Andres Martin
"Nancy Rappaport is a sensitive writer of exquisitely attuned self-reflective abilities. She manages to peer into the darkness without being enveloped and overwhelmed by it."
The Wall Street Journal
"One of the Best Health Books of 2009--The Wall Street Journal"
"Belong[s] in any informed patient's library....Rappaport delves into the complex mental-health issues that lead some depressed people to take their own lives....The lessons she learns help her come to terms with the loss that has haunted her throughout her life, but also inspired her to become a better doctor...."--Laura Landro, The Wall Street Journal
Psychiatric Times
November 30, 2009
Review by Alexandra M. Helper, MD.
"This well-written memoir, with appendices that list scholarly articles as well as Web-based resources, will enable therapists to better understand the full impact of suicide and early maternal loss."
Basil & Spice: Author & Book Views on Healthy Life
October 19, 2009
Lynette Fleming review.
"I couldn’t put this book down until I had turned to the very last page."
All Because Two People Fell in Love
October 17, 2009
Book Review: "...one of the most moving books I’ve read in a long time."
Publishers Weekly, 7/20/2009 Starred Review
In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother's Suicide Nancy Rappaport. Basic, $25.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-465-01450-7
In a fearless memoir of loss and grief, this Harvard Medical School assistant prof, veering between “being a detective and... a realist,” delves into a complex family history haunted by the 1963 death of her mother, a Boston socialite, from an overdose when the author was only four. Using her mother's words from newspaper clippings, notes and a novel she was writing at the time of her death, Rappaport, the youngest of six children, reconstructs a vivacious and deeply troubled wife and mother. “Didn't she know that she would leave all these shattered children wondering if it was their fault?” son Jerry laments 44 years later. Yet in pushing through her parents' turbulent marriage and troubled family history, Rappaport weaves a stunning narrative of perspective, profound sadness and unrelenting hope: “I keep trying to follow in her wake, moving in and out of my grief buoyed by the voyage of exploring her dark reality as a way of helping myself to understand her....” She has also mapped an inspiring course for anyone to dissect family dynamics and mental illness, hoping to understand and, finally, accept. 8 pages of b&w photos. (Sept.)
"The book has much to commend it: superb writing, conscientious
reporting, the tone of a good mystery..."
— Boston Globe
"Compelling ...an emotional revelation ...Rappaport’s words offer encouragement, enlightenment, and hope."
— Regis Schilken, BlogCritics.org
Advance Praise for In Her Wake
“A powerful and eloquent book about loss and incomprehension, and a unique journey of learning and reconciliation.” — Kay Redfield Jamison, Professor of Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine; author of An Unquiet Mind and Nothing Was the Same
“Rappaport writes of that mysterious and powerful force, the mother, and the impossibility of fully knowing the truth about her….She knows that the discovery of the past is never the end, but the beginning of thought.”
— Susanna Moore, author of In the Cut and The Big Girls
"Heartfelt....Using notes, photographs, letters and drawings, as well as the draft of an unfinished novel her mother left behind, Rappaport attempts to not only understand the mother she barely knew, but also bring some peace to her still-grieving family."
— Kirkus
“If you looked at the trauma of a suicide as a rock thrown into a family pool, you’d see circular ripples differently affecting each part of that little body of water….In Her Wake reads like a mystery, yet it leaves us with much, much more…an almost firsthand knowledge of the power of psychic trauma.”
— Lenore Terr, M.D., author of Magical Moments of Change and Too Scared to Cry
“Extraordinary….The constant in Rappaport’s prose is her steadfast refusal to sugarcoat and her fierce determination to find answers to uncomfortable questions. A well-told story that is a testament to the power of love tempered by heartache.”
— Pete Earley, author of Crazy
“A touching and insightful story of love, loss, and healing.”
— Marya Hornbacher, author of Wasted and Madness
“With the eyes of a probing detective, the wisdom and empathy of a clinician, and the yearning and love of a devoted daughter, Rappaport traces the roots and remnants of her mother’s suicide. Blending honesty and delicacy, passion and restraint, In Her Wake is riveting and revelatory reading.”
— Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Emily Hargroves Fisher Professor of Education, Harvard University; author of Balm in Gilead and The Third Chapter
"Beautifully written, In Her Wake should be required reading for all of us in the helping professions."
— Linda T. Sanford, LICSW, author of Strong at the Broken Places, co-author of Women and Self-Esteem
“Rappaport looks back at her mother’s suicide in order to find a resting place for herself and her family; so they can go on, into the future, with courage. I recognize her pain, and I salute her achievement.”
— Christopher Lukas, author of Blue Genes and Silent Grief
“In Her Wake is as engaging as a well written novel, with truths and insights that are meaningful to every family.”
— Michael Jellinek, Chief, Child Psychiatry Service, Massachusetts General Hospital
“This inspiring book reaffirms the strength and resiliency of the human spirit.”
— Alvin F. Poussaint, MD, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Judge Baker Children’s Center; author of Lay My Burden Down
“In Her Wake is a moving story of mother and daughter, and the intimate echoes of family complications across the generations; as Nancy learns more about the mother she never knew, she also tells the story of her own journey and the story of a troubled but fascinating family, and helps the reader understand the twists and turns that love and loss can take.”
— Perri Klass, author of The Mercy Rule