Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

  • Apple
  • Android
  • Windows Phone
  • Android

To get the free app, enter your email address or mobile phone number.
Download to your computer
Kindle Cloud Reader
Facebook Twitter Pinterest <Embed>
Qty:1
  • List Price: $16.99
  • Save: $2.35 (14%)
FREE Shipping on orders with at least $25 of books.
Only 5 left in stock (more on the way).
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
In Her Wake: A Child Psyc... has been added to your Cart
Want it tomorrow, April 23? Order within and choose Saturday Delivery at checkout. Details
Ship to:
Select a shipping address:
To see addresses, please
or
Please enter a valid US zip code.
or
FREE Shipping on orders over $25.
Used: Very Good | Details
Sold by Knight's Honor Bookshop
Fulfilled by Amazon
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comment: This paperback is graded Very Good because it is free of marks, has normal cover wear, has a firm binding, and is not a library book.

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) is a service we offer sellers that lets them store their products in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and we directly pack, ship, and provide customer service for these products. Something we hope you'll especially enjoy: FBA items qualify for FREE Shipping and .

If you're a seller, Fulfillment by Amazon can help you increase your sales. We invite you to learn more about Fulfillment by Amazon .

Sorry, there was a problem.

There was an error retrieving your Wish Lists. Please try again.

Sorry, there was a problem.

List unavailable.
Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon
Flip to back Flip to front
Listen Playing... Paused   You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more
See all 2 images

In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother's Suicide Paperback – July 12, 2011

by
Nancy Rappaport (Author)
› Visit Amazon's Nancy Rappaport Page
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
See search results for this author
Are you an author? Learn about Author Central
Nancy Rappaport (Author)
4.8 out of 5 stars 126 customer reviews
See all 4 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions
Price
New from Used from
Kindle
"Please retry"
$7.49
— —
Hardcover
"Please retry"
—
$0.99 $0.01
Paperback
"Please retry"
$14.64
$4.98 $0.01
$14.64 FREE Shipping on orders with at least $25 of books. Only 5 left in stock (more on the way). Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Frequently Bought Together

  • In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother's Suicide
  • +
  • The Behavior Code: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Teaching the Most Challenging Students
Total price: $43.09
Buy the selected items together
NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE

Product Details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Basic Books; First Trade Paper Edition edition (July 12, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0465022138
  • ISBN-13: 978-0465022137
  • Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.7 x 8.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (126 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #768,179 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsGreat book - excellent read, profound, thought-provoking
By Jen H on August 30, 2009
Format: Hardcover
In Her Wake is a terrific book - I highly recommend it.

I had a hard time putting it down - and that says a lot! (Though I am a former high school English teacher, I often start books and if they don't grab me within 30 pages I have a hard time completing them.)

In Her Wake grabbed me on multiple levels - the drama of the large and complex family, the author/narrator's search for all she could learn about her mother who committed suicide when the author was 4, the impact of divorce and custody battles on individuals and a family and a psychiatric look at suicide. It was a great mix of a personal narrative coupled with psychiatric facts and anecdotes from the child psychiatrist/author's experiences with kids and families.

Though you might worry that a book that centers on a mother's suicide would be depressing, quite the opposite is true. In Her Wake is actually uplifting - demonstrating the power of family (in all of its forms) to recreate itself in support of its members, and the power of people to persevere and thrive through tough experiences. Rappaport does a great job of bringing you with her on her search for her mother, and the growth that that search allows for her and for others. It is a profoundly personal view into a family - and it leaves us all wiser and more understanding for having read it.

THIS IS AN ENGROSSING BOOK - GO BUY IT AND TRY IT FOR YOURSELF.
2 Comments 18 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsLeft Behind ... A Tragedy Unraveled
By Lynette R. Fleming on October 20, 2009
Format: Hardcover
So many parallels ... like the author, Nancy Rappaport, I grew up in the sixties (about 9 years before her), and went with my family to Expo `67 in Montreal. Like Nancy's mother, my mother had children (but only three not six) and worked outside of the home at a time when that was not the thing to do. Like Nancy's, the home I grew up in was filled with marital tension, one day escalating to the point that my dad threw a flower pot at my mom. Like Nancy's dad, my dad had a bit of a temper. One day when her three children were 5, 4, and 2, despondent over her marriage and the family's money problems, my mom decided to end her life. She parked her car on the railroad tracks, waiting for a train to end her misery. Unlike Nancy, I was lucky ... my mom did not follow through with her impulse. As the train barreled down the tracks toward her car, a vision of our faces appeared to her and she drove off the tracks with just a few minutes to spare.

Perhaps because of my own childhood, I couldn't put this book down until I had turned to the very last page. Memories of the past swished by me like yard ornaments in a hurricane ... events and feelings I had forgotten in the haste of everyday living. Having never been to a psychiatrist or psychologist, I benefitted from the therapy indirectly provided by this prominent psychiatrist. I now understand my repetitive childhood nightmares, my own adolescent depression, and why my parents' marriage had to end, which it did just a few months after I grew up and moved away.

This story of a woman's quest to find out why her mother ended her life is more intriguing than any best-selling paperback novel. Although I had never heard much about the family, I imagine my father-in-law (now deceased) ...Read more ›
Comment 12 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsIntricate and bittersweet, Rappaport's book explores and heals...
By Heather Bull on December 14, 2009
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
This unabashed account of a daughter's lifetime of coping with the reality of losing her mother by suicide at a tender age is rendered with the tenderness of a true healer and the precision of a modern doctor. It runs unapologetically through a kaleidescope of emotional and practical responses of a survivor struggling to understand why and how a beloved family member could be driven to take her own life.
Anyone who has suffered the loss of a family member, through suicide or other means, will be brought from tears to laughter, you'll find yourself smiling cynically at painful truths and celebrating life. The true gift in this book, though, is to the surviving family members of those who have committed suicide. To have this level of transparency and honesty shared poignantly by an obviously gifted writer and doctor is an offer not to be refused. Rappaort's decades of experience piecing together emotionally shattered children shines through every page, and you'll close the book a different person than the one who opened it.
Comment 12 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsmoving and education read for professionals and families
By Amazon Customer on August 31, 2009
Format: Hardcover
In this remarkable book, Nancy Rappaport calls on her extensive training and experience as a child psychiatrist as she combs through secret journals, public records and painful memories to understand her own mother's suicide, which occurred when she was only four years old. She shares the stories of five generations of her prominent Boston family, as well as anecdotes from her many patients and scenes from her own therapy, to demonstrate how people cope with and understand mental illness and loss. Rappaport's thoughtful, eloquent book shows that while it is unbearably difficult to survive the loss of a loved one to suicide and to try to understand it, it is possible to nonetheless live a happy, productive and meaningful life. It inspires us to find meaning in the tragedy of loss and illness and carry it with us, but not allow it to define our lives.
Comment 11 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse
5.0 out of 5 starsThe Courage to Seek and to Speak
By Rachel Z. Ritvo on November 11, 2010
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
There are many reasons to read this book. One can read it for it's graceful and cogent writing and the unfolding chapters each with a different focal person. It can be read as a family saga across generations and multiple marriages, births, and divorces seen through the lens of a tragic event, the suicide of the author's mother. It can be read as a window back into Boston of the 1950',60's and 70's. It affords a view into the history of psychiatric illness and treatment and changing social mores regarding emotional trauma. It can also be read as a very empathic window into the world of families who have lost a loved one to suicide.

Each family member is respectfully, yet vividly, drawn from interviews close to the present time while the writer delves back to the memories of forty plus years past. Thus, it is also a book about memory.

Suicide is a scary subject. For many people suicide is unspeakable. Nancy Rappaport eloquently demonstrates that we can safely put words to the confusuon,the pain and the irreconcilable contradictions suicide raises for all whom it touches. This is not a scary book, it is human and comforting, a very satisfying book to read.
Comment 5 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
Thank you for your feedback.
Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again
Report abuse

Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsVery insightful

As a student of psychology, receiving this book in the mail was certainly a wonderful treat for me. With one of my interests revolving around abnormal psychology, suicide has been... Read more

Published 1 month ago by Stephanie Elkins
5.0 out of 5 starsA Must-Read for Those Coping with Suicide Loss

As a survivor of suicide loss (my mother took her own life when I was ten) as well as a child psychotherapist, I identify with Nancy on so many levels. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsAn in-depth family review, thoughtfully presented as the author ...

An in-depth family review, thoughtfully presented as the author interviewed members of a very large family and their friends and associates to try to understand complex events from... Read more

Published 5 months ago by Richard Taylor
4.0 out of 5 starsExcellent info and beautifully written

Suicide is “a permanent answer to a temporary setback” (page 216). When Nancy was four years old, her mother, (also) Nancy, a wife and mother of six children, committed suicide. Read more

Published 6 months ago by StephTheBookworm
3.0 out of 5 starsNot what I had hoped for

I really struggled to read this to the end and I only did because I was "safe"- reading it for a friend, who is affected by a suicide within their family. Read more

Published 7 months ago by Francipani
4.0 out of 5 starsAn extremely well written work giving insight into the times ...

An extremely well written work giving insight into the times and the attitudes prevalent in her mother's era as well as her own journey to healing.

Published 12 months ago by Jean
5.0 out of 5 starsNo answers for the bereft

This was a journey of comparison for me- Nancy's loss to my loss. What can we do to help stop suicide? Read more

Published 19 months ago by Sparky7239
4.0 out of 5 starsGreat read

Nancy put together this history of her family with grace and class as she wrestled with her mother's death. Her writing flowed and I found it hard to put down. Read more

Published on March 21, 2014 by Rosemary Hellwig
5.0 out of 5 starsFor Anyone Who Lives with the Suicide or Mental Illness of a Loved One

Nancy Rappaport's style and insight make this book a most engaging read. Her personal insight is doubly rewarding as it is refracted through the prism of her own training and... Read more

Published on August 13, 2013 by Ella
5.0 out of 5 starsExploration of the Past

I loved the book and the courage it took the author Nancy Rappaport, to go back and seek answers from her childhood. Read more

Published on June 26, 2013 by Rose Marie Frazier

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother's Suicide
Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more
This item: In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother's Suicide
Set up a giveaway

There's a problem loading this menu right now.

Learn more about Amazon Prime.