Next of Kin

An electrifying memoir about the demise of a singular familya stunning new book by Gabrielle Hamilton, author of theNew York Timesbestseller and James Beard Award-winnerBlood, Bones & Butter.

The youngest of five children, Gabrielle Hamilton took pride in her unsentimental, idiosyncratic family. She idolized her parents charisma and non-conformity. She worshipped her siblings mischievousness and flair. Hers was a family with no fondness for the humdrum.

Hamilton grew up to find enormous success, first as a chef and then as the author of award-winning, bestselling books. But her family ties frayed in ways both seismic and mundane until eventually she was estranged from them all. In the wake of one brothers sudden death and anothers suicide, while raising young children of her own, Hamilton was compelled to examine the sprawling, complicated root system underlying heir losses. She began investigating her family’s devout independence and individualism with a nearly forensic rigor, soon discovering a sobering warning in their long-held self-satisfaction. By the time she was called to care for her declining motherthe mother shed seen only twice in thirty yearsHamilton had realized a certain freedom, one made possible only through a careful psychological autopsy of her family.

Hamiltons gift for pungent dialogue, propulsive storytelling, intense honesty, and raucous humor made her first book a classic of modern memoir. InNext of Kin, she offers a keen and compassionate portrait of the people she grew up with and the prevailing but soon-to-falter ethos of the era that produced them. A personal account of one familys disintegration,Next of Kinis also a universal story of the emotional clarity that comes from scrutinizing our family mythologies and seeing through to the other side.