Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them

Description

'A life-changing new book' DAILY MAIL What problem touches millions of people and causes distress so profound that it can last a lifetime? What if no reliable professional guidance exists for this problem, so most people who suffer from it are on their own in finding solutions? This critically important issue - and hidden epidemic - is family estrangement. Few problems are so widespread and so damaging, sometimes for decades and across generations, and yet there has not been a definitive, popular and data-informed book about how families are broken and stay broken - until now. Fault Lines is a fascinating, moving and above all practical treatment of this complex issue, aimed at adults of all ages. Based on 300 in-depth interviews with 1,800 individuals, this book captures the eloquence of ordinary people facing family challenges that threaten their identity, health and well-being, relying on sources never before available, including a unique combination of rich, in-depth interviews, data from large-scale surveys and conversations with leading family therapists. This is the first book to reveal successful strategies from people who have found ways to repair rifts or live peacefully with the consequences when nothing can be done - and the first to offer hope to broken families which need it the most.

Karl Pillemer, Ph.D., is an internationally recognised family sociologist. He is Hazel Reed Professor of Human Development at Cornell University. Dr Pillemer specialises in studying family and is a pioneer in examining how families contain and cope with powerful, conflicting emotions. He has authored more than 150 scientific publications and is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.