The Still Point of the Turning World: A Mother's Story

Rapp, Emily

ISBN 10: 1444775936 / ISBN 13: 9781444775938

Published by Two Roads, U.S.A., 2013

About this Item

First Printing. Flat-signed by author on Title page with NO inscription. Black textured paper boards with gold foil-stamped spine. AS NEW & UNREAD - NO flaws of any kind - NO rem mark or ex-lib. DJ has NO flaws. Not price-clipped.

Seller Inventory # 003774

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Still Point of the Turning World: A Mother's Story
• Publisher: Two Roads, U.S.A.
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1444775936
• ISBN 13: 9781444775938
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Printing: 1st Printing
• Condition: As New
• Dust Jacket Condition: As New
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

Like all mothers, Emily Rapp had ambitious plans for her son, Ronan. He would be smart, loyal, physically fearless, level-headed but fun. He would be good at crossword puzzles like his father. He would be an avid skier like his mother. Rapp would speak to him in foreign languages and give him the best education.

But all of these plans changed when Ronan was diagnosed at nine months old with Tay-Sachs disease, a rare and always-fatal degenerative disorder. Ronan was not expected to live beyond the age of three; he would be permanently stalled at a developmental level of six months. Rapp and her husband were forced to re-evaluate everything they thought they knew about raising a family. They would have to learn to live with their child in the moment; to find happiness in the midst of sorrow; to parent without a future.

The Still Point of the Turning World is the story of a mother's journey through grief and beyond it. Rapp's response to her son's diagnosis was a belief that she needed to 'make my world big' - to make sense of her family's situation through art, literature, philosophy, theology and myth. Drawing on a broad range of thinkers and writers, from C.S. Lewis to Sylvia Plath, Hegel to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Rapp learns what wisdom there is to be gained from parenting a terminally ill child. In luminous, exquisitely moving prose, she re-examines our most fundamental assumptions about what it means to be a good parent, to be a success, and to live a meaningful life.

About the Author

A former Fulbright scholar and graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Emily Rapp is the author of Poster Child: A Memoir. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Salon and Slate among other pubblications. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers' Award, a James A. Michener Fellowship at the University of Texas-Austin, and the Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence fellowship at Bucknell University.
She is currently professor of creative writing and literature at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design and a faculty member in the University of California-Riverside MFA Program.

For more information on Emily, visit her website, http://emilyrapp.com.