Press Release: The Kids Are All Right by Liz & Diana Welch
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
By Liz and Diana Welch
with Dan and Amanda Welch
THE MEMOIR THAT’S GETTING ALL THE BUZZ THIS FALL!
Praise for THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT:
“After the suspicious demise of dad and loss of mom to cancer, the orphaned Welch children were split up; now grown, and in rocking chorus, Diana, Liz, Amanda, and Dan Welch explain how in the world The Kids Are All Right.” —Vanity Fair
“This touching, funny memoir…is an ode to the strength of sibling bonds” —Cookie Magazine
“This frank, wry, aching memoir…will leave readers musing over memory’s slippery nature; the imperfect, enduring bonds of family; and the human heart’s remarkable resilience.” —Booklist
“A brutally honest book that captures the journey of four people too young to face the challenged they nevertheless had to face.” —Kirkus
“I can’t wait for this memoir to hit the shelves this fall! You will yell Bravo! and leap to your feet with happiness when you finish reading this memoir. . . . Like Jeannette Wall’s The Glass Castle, Diana, Dan, Liz, and Amanda Welch have written an intense, vibrant glimpse into their lives, an extraordinary saga you’ll be glad to read and recommend to everyone.” —Marilyn Smith, manager of buyers, Keplers Books and Music, Palo Alto, CA
“This is the story of a family that circumstances tried to destroy but love and loyalty saved.
It is impressive, affirming, and almost impossible to put down. READ THIS BOOK!!!” —Jackie Blem, Tattered Cover Book Store, Denver, CO
“This is a tragic and heroic story that precisely maps a decade and reads like a spy thriller. The Welch kids are legendary!” —Sean Wilsey, author of Oh the Glory of It All
“The Welch family’s multi-vocal story is impossible to put down. I read The Kids Are All Right with awe at the resilience and hope a family can manage in the aftermath of unthinkable loss.”
—Danielle Trussoni, author of Falling Through the Earth
“Told with humor, compassion, and humility, and teeming with priceless ’80s references, this story of parentless children learning to parent each other grabbed hold of my heart (and attention) and refused to let go.” —Heidi Julavits, author of The Uses of Enchantment
The personal memoir category is a competitive one, and the bar has been set high by books like The Liar’s Club, The Glass Castle, and Oh The Glory of it All which continue to gain new fans years after publication. There is something about these family stories that resonates with the reader, making you feel you are getting a personal glimpse into the authors’ lives and those of their families.
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (Harmony Books; 9/29/09) by Liz and Diana Welch with Dan and Amanda Welch is just such a book. Intimate, compassionate, inspiring; this is the story of four siblings who are orphaned, separated, and, after going through so much, finally reunited as a family.
The year 1983 was a difficult one for the Welch family. Yet, somehow, between their handsome investment banker father’s mysterious death, which left the family with more than one million dollars of debt, and their glamorous soap-opera-star mother’s (Ann Williams) cancer diagnosis, the Welch siblings managed to handle each new heartbreaking misfortune in the same way they dealt with the unexpected arrival of the forgotten-about Chilean exchange student—together.
All that changed with the death of their mother. While nineteen-year-old Amanda was legally on her own, the three younger siblings—Liz, sixteen; Dan, fourteen, and Diana, eight—were each dispatched to a different set of family friends. Quick-witted and sharp-tongued Amanda headed for college in New York City and immersed herself in an ’80s world of alternative music and drugs. Liz, living with the couple she babysat for, followed in Amanda’s footsteps until high school graduation and a job as a nanny in Norway lured her overseas. Mischievous, rebellious Dan bounced from guardian to boarding school and back again, getting deeper into trouble and drugs. And Diana, the red-haired baby of the family, was given a new life and identity and told to forget her past. But her siblings refused to forget her—or let her go.
Told in the alternating voices of the four siblings, their poignant, harrowing story of unbreakable bonds unfurls with ferocious feeling. Their story opens up like a family dinner conversation: one starts a story, another butts in with a correction, another picks up on a detail that sparks a different memory, and so on. Despite their wrenching loss and subsequent separation, they retained the resilience and humor that both their mother and father endowed them with—growing up as lost souls, taking disastrous turns along the way, but eventually coming out right side up.
While this technique sounds hard to pull off, the Welches nail it in the telling of their narrative. You get to know each of their personalities and how they were individually affected by what happened to their family—an approach that ultimately shows you that no two people experience the same event in the same way. THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT is a testament to the power of the everlasting bond that siblings share. Equal parts heart-warming and heart-wrenching, this inspiring memoir will leave readers crying, laughing out loud, and reaching for their scrapbooks to recall their own childhood memories.
Like any great book, THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT pulls you in and then stays with you long after you’ve finished reading
About the Authors
Liz Welch is an ASME award-winning journalist and contributing writer at Glamour and Inc. magazines. Her work has also been published in Real Simple, O , The Oprah Magazine , the New York Times Magazine , Life , Parade , Vogue , New York , Elle , Marie Claire , and many others. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Diana Welch is a writer living in Austin, Texas, where she works with the multimedia label Monofonus Press. Her reportage, fashion, and travel writing has appeared in the Austin Chronicle , Nylon , and Night magazine.
About the Book
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
By Liz and Diana Welch
with Dan and Amanda Welch
Harmony Books
September 29, 2009
Pages: 352
Price: $24.99
ISBN: 978-0-307-39604-4
www.CrownPublishing.com
To see family movies and photos please visit the authors at www.TheKidsAreAllRightBook.com
Contact:
Sarah Breivogel
(212) 572-2722
sbreivogel@randomhouse.com
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