Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
Solomon interviewed over three hundred families whose children differ profoundly from their parents: deaf children, dwarf children, children conceived in rape, child prodigies, children with Down syndrome or autism or schizophrenia. The book took eleven years. Its argument is that difference is not deficiency, and that love can grow precisely where we least expected to find it.
Putting deafness, dwarfism, autism, schizophrenia, being transgender, being conceived in rape, and committing violent crime under one framework is a “huge conceptual leap of faith” that “bites off more than Solomon himself can chew.” Readers say the analogy anchoring it is not close, and object to the “agenda constantly shoved in my face,” the premise that “all difference is automatically better for people and society. Always.” The families skew wealthy, the “overwhelming majority were extraordinarily well off.” Readers from inside Deaf culture flag “gross inaccuracies in the Deaf chapter.” And the structure “lists one case study after another” across seven hundred pages, so readers “did not read every word of this huge book” and “had to space it out in small doses.”
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
