The Child Who Never Spoke: 23 ½ Lessons in Fragility

In 2009 Cristina Nehring's brilliant first book, A Vindication of Love, was featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review. An important new voice had appeared in American letters. Just as suddenly, Nehring seemed to disappear—only to reemerge like a bolt from the blue.

"One of the most graceful, tender and wise books I have ever read." —Christina Hoff Sommers, Senior Fellow Emeritus, American Enterprise Institute

"Yes, there are lessons to be taken from these pages, hard-won lessons wrung from Cristina Nehring's ongoing odyssey as the single mother of a Down syndrome child and spun into lyric wisdom. But The Child Who Never Spoke: 23 ½ Lessons in Fragility is more than a guidebook to the uses and unexpected gifts of adversity. It is a love story, an adventure tale, an impetuous travelog, and a suspenseful medical saga (you can almost hear the hospital beeps in the background, the shuffle of footsteps down the halls) borne along by Nehring's buoyant breadth of spirit and the unbreakable bond with her daughter Eurydice. And the writing! So elegant and intimate. It's like hearing from a cherished friend after way too long." —James Wolcott, author of the memoir Lucking Out and the essay collection Critical Mass

"In 2009 Cristina Nehring's brilliant first book, A Vindication of Love, was featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review. An important new voice had appeared in American letters. Then just as suddenly Nehring seemed to disappear. Now unexpectedly from Paris comes a heartbreaking and tender memoir, The Child Who Never Spoke, that explains her years of silence. These "lessons in fragility" tell of Nehring's unexpected pregnancy and birth of a "special child," a baby girl with Down's syndrome in its most extreme form. Forthright, profound, and passionate, this new book is also a vindication of love. Although it tells a story full of sorrow, The Child Who Never Spoke is a not a sad book but a profound and joyous testament to the love between a mother and daughter." —Dana Gioia, California poet laureate and author of Can Poetry Matter?

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Release date

Audiobook: December 5, 2023