Press Release: The Kids Are All Right by Liz and Diana Welch
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Justina Batchelor
(212) 572-2247
THE MEMOIR EVERYONE WAS TALKING ABOUT
LAST FALL FINALLY ARRIVES IN PAPERBACK WITH A NEW AFTERWORD FROM THE AUTHORS
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT:
A Memoir
By Liz and Diana Welch
with Dan and Amanda Welch
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT: A Memoir (Three Rivers Press; 9/14/10) by Liz and Diana Welch with Dan and Amanda Welch tells the story of four siblings who are orphaned, separated, and, after going through so much, finally reunited as a family. In hardcover this unique memoir received unanimous praise and national attention—everywhere from NPR to Good Morning America to stellar reviews in People, O, The Oprah Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Redbook, Self, Cookie, Vanity Fair, Chicago Sun-Times, and many more. It also earned a place in readers’ hearts who empathized with the Welch siblings’ tremendous story.
In fact, when the Welches invited readers to share their own stories on their website they were flooded with responses not just from people they knew and grew up with, but even people they have never met (check out the site for a sampling of these stories www.thekidsareallrightbook.com/your-stories). Whenever the siblings spoke at readings or for book clubs, they heard time and time again from people who had been though a similar experience and related to the complicated emotions that the Welches perfectly express in their memoir. THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT speaks to anyone who’s ever had to take care of a sick parent, been separated from those they love, or felt frightened that things would never be all right again.
The paperback edition offers brand-new material that will make you fall in love with this story all over again. It includes sixteen new pages that include photos and an update from each sibling offering just what readers crave upon finishing the book, further insight into each sibling’s mind-set, details on where life has taken them and what they’re up to now, and how sharing their story with the world affected them and their relationships with each another.
The story beings in 1983, which was a difficult year 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 to 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 zeal. 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 it.
# # # # #
About the Authors:
Liz Welch is an ASME award-winning journalist and contributing writer at Inc. magazine. Her work has also been published in the New York Times Magazine, Marie Claire, Real Simple, Glamour, and Redbook. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Diana Welch is a writer and musician whose work has appeared in the Austin Chronicle, the Texas Observer, Nylon, Smith Magazine, and elsewhere. She lives in Austin, Texas, where she is a member of the band Storm Shelter.
Amanda, Diana, Liz, and Dan Welch
___________________________________________
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
By Liz and Diana Welch
with Dan and Amanda Welch
Three Rivers Press * September 14, 2010 * Pages: 352
Price: $15.00 * 978-0-307-39605-1
www.threeriverspress.com
To see family movies and photos, please visit the authors at www.TheKidsAreAllRightBook.com
