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Published by She Writes Press
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
Table of Contents
About The Book
For fans of Natasha Trethewey and Maggie Smith, a mother-daughter story of multigenerational trauma, grief, discovery, and love, with the backdrops of an historic American tragedy and an iconic family business, written in lyrical, fragmented form.
In 1960, six years before Marty Ross-Dolen was born, her maternal grandparents were killed in an airline disaster involving the collision of two commercial jets over New York City. They were traveling from Columbus, Ohio, to seek placement for their family’s iconic magazine, Highlights for Children, on the newsstands. Their daughter—Marty’s mother—was fourteen years old at the time. This genre-bending memoir tells Marty’s story of being raised by a mother in protracted mourning.
The fragmented narrative explores Marty’s journey, from personal ways of coping as a child to the evolution of a mother-daughter relationship that matured over time. It is also about her longing to know her maternal grandmother, and through saved letters and photographs from her grandmother’s life, she enters a fantastical relationship that serves to replace one that otherwise could never exist. Ultimately it is about the discovery of truth, in unearthing the story of her grandparents’ deaths and her mother’s acute loss, in freeing her grandmother’s image from the weight of a tragic death, and in Marty’s own delivery from darkness. Beyond that, it is about universal life choices, the ways human beings unknowingly determine their destinies, and the healing powers of truth and love.
In 1960, six years before Marty Ross-Dolen was born, her maternal grandparents were killed in an airline disaster involving the collision of two commercial jets over New York City. They were traveling from Columbus, Ohio, to seek placement for their family’s iconic magazine, Highlights for Children, on the newsstands. Their daughter—Marty’s mother—was fourteen years old at the time. This genre-bending memoir tells Marty’s story of being raised by a mother in protracted mourning.
The fragmented narrative explores Marty’s journey, from personal ways of coping as a child to the evolution of a mother-daughter relationship that matured over time. It is also about her longing to know her maternal grandmother, and through saved letters and photographs from her grandmother’s life, she enters a fantastical relationship that serves to replace one that otherwise could never exist. Ultimately it is about the discovery of truth, in unearthing the story of her grandparents’ deaths and her mother’s acute loss, in freeing her grandmother’s image from the weight of a tragic death, and in Marty’s own delivery from darkness. Beyond that, it is about universal life choices, the ways human beings unknowingly determine their destinies, and the healing powers of truth and love.
Product Details
- Publisher: She Writes Press (May 6, 2025)
- Length: 200 pages
- ISBN13: 9781647428921
Raves and Reviews
“Using lyrical prose and startling imagery, Marty Ross-Dolen tells the story of a life marked forever by a past family tragedy. This deeply haunting and tremendously moving work of beauty offers a rare and genuine glimpse into the way a heart can both break and mend at once.”—Bret Lott, author of Jewel, an Oprah Book Club pick, and Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer’s Life
“If ever there was a book written from and for love, with a hunger to know, to understand, and to heal, this is it.”—Abigail Thomas, New York Times best-selling author of Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life and A Three Dog Life: A Memoir
“How do we conjure our dead, especially if they left this world before we were born? Marty Ross-Dolen asks this question, and with this beautiful book, offers us a map. They are all around us, in each photograph, each saved letter, each thing they built. And what was built by her lost grandparents is iconic, part of the very fabric of America. With Always There, Always Gone, Ross-Dolen doesn't just conjure a tragic death. She conjures life.”—Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City and This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire
“In a series of stunning vignettes, letters, and photographs, Marty Ross-Dolen traces a legacy of grief while confronting generational silence and loss with daring clarity and a poetic eye. The result is tender and wrenching, a compendium of longing. As with all the best writing, her work inspires and makes me eager to get on with my own. A dazzling memoir.”—Sonja Livingston, author of Ghostbread
“When Marty Ross-Dolen’s grandparents are killed in a terrible airplane accident years before she is born, the future is undone and then remade. The shattering will live on in Marty’s mother, reverberate through Marty, bend and twist inside the evidence of lives taken far too soon. With deepest love and capaciously poetic language, Always There, Always Gone offers proof of the sustaining power of language, even in the face of catastrophic loss.”—Beth Kephart, National Book Award finalist and author of My Life in Paper: Adventures in Ephemera
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