Book Summary and Reviews of Us, After by Rachel Zimmerman

Us, After by Rachel Zimmerman

Us, After

A Memoir of Love and Suicide

by Rachel Zimmerman

  • Published:
  • Jun 2024, 256 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

When a state trooper appeared at Rachel Zimmerman's door to report that her husband had jumped to his death off a nearby bridge, she fell to her knees, unable to fully absorb the news.

How could the man she married, a devoted father and robotics professor at MIT, have committed such a violent act? How would she explain this to her young daughters? And could she have stopped him?

A longtime journalist, she probed obsessively, believing answers would help her survive. She interviewed doctors, suicide researchers and a man who jumped off the same bridge and lived.

Us, After examines domestic devastation and resurgence, digging into the struggle between public and private selves, life's shifting perspectives, the work of motherhood, and the secrets we keep. In this memoir, Zimmerman confronts the unimaginable and discovers the good in what remains.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"This poignant, soul-baring memoir is truly one of the most moving accounts of grief, loss and resilience that I've read." —The Washington Post

"Masterfully written and compelling... Zimmerman's book is a marvelous feat; I stayed up all night reading it." —Deesha Philyaw, author, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

"Us, After is one of the best memoirs I have read in a very long time. It is poetic and lyrical, unflinching, and a testament to the strength of the human soul...We bleed for Zimmerman and her two daughters. We laugh and cry with them. And ultimately we marvel at their strength and resilience." —Buzz Bissinger, author, Friday Night Lights

This information about Us, After was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Rachel Zimmerman

Rachel Zimmerman, an award-winning journalist, has been writing about health and wellness for more than two decades. She currently writes stories on mental health for The Washington Post. Previously, she worked as a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal and a health reporter for WBUR, Boston's NPR station, where she co-founded a popular blog and podcast. Her reporting and essays have appeared in The New York Times; The Atlantic; Vogue; O, the Oprah Magazine; New York Magazine's The Cut; The Huffington Post; and Slate, among other publications. She co-authored The Doula Guide to Birth (Bantam Books/Random House) and The Healing Power of Storytelling (North Atlantic Books).

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