“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 bestselling author of Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life and A Three Dog Life: A Memoir

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“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

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“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

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“A tragic accident, an inherited trauma, a fierce desire to protect. These are the threads Marty Ross-Dolen weaves in Always There, Always Gone. Searching for a grandmother she never knew, Ross-Dolen forges connections between three generations—grandmother, mother, daughter—in this wise and moving memoir. Innovative in its approach, Always There, Always Gone reminds us of the resilience of the human spirit and the ties that bind.”

—Lee Martin, author of the Pulitzer Prize Finalist, The Bright Forever

 

“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. Letters and photographs will become both echoes and erasures. Imagination will steal the place of memory. Narrative will be replaced by wisps, yearnings, fragments, and yet that narrative will prevail. 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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“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

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“Reading Always There, Always Gone is an immersive, mesmerizing experience. It’s been a while since I read a story that so completely pulled me in. With striking, fresh metaphors and carefully crafted sentences, the writing tugged on every fiber of my mother-being. Days after closing this haunting memoir, I was in a daze, feeling very much like a time traveler returning to the present. Marty Ross-Dolen’s powerful words and this book will always be with me.”

—Christine French Cully, Editor-in-Chief, Highlights for Children, and author of Dear Highlights: What Adults Can Learn from 75 Years of Letters and Conversations with Kids​​​​​​