{"product_id":"in-spite-of-everything-a-memoir-9781400068821","title":"In Spite of Everything: A Memoir","description":"\u003cp\u003eFor most of my generationGeneration Xthere is only one question: When did your parents split? Our lives have been framed by the answer. Ask us. We remember everything.  In this powerful  poignant  and often laugh-out-loud-funny memoir  Susan Gregory Thomas reflects on that life-defining question and its answer through a lens imprinted by memory and sharpened by time.  Raised in Berkeley  Thomas grew up in a seemingly stable household. But when the family moved east when she was twelve  her father  a charming alcoholic  ran off with his secretary  and her mother collapsed. Thomas and her younger brother joined the ubiquitous flocks of 1980s latchkey kids: collateral damage in their parents wars  sustaining private injuries they would try to self-treat throughout adolescence and adulthood.  When Thomas became a wife and mother in her early thirties  she made a fierce promise: She would never let her own children know the scorched earth of divorce. It was a vow shared by many of her peers  who  in reaction to the divorces of the 1970s and 80s  sought out marriages based on deeper friendships and more genuine partnerships than those of previous generations. So Thomas was stunned when  after sixteen years with the man she considered her best friend  she found her marriage coming to an end. Not only did the divorce reopen all the old wounds  but she would now have to contend with the aftershocks affecting her two young daughters.  In Spite of Everything is an astounding  bright  and brilliantly told account of a mothers fight to protect her childrens world and to make sense of her own troubled pastand the culture of divorce in which she and Generation X were raised. Interwoven with original  hilarious insights on divorce and parenthood  Thomass eye-opening  gut-wrenching  ultimately optimistic story holds a mirror up to a whole generation.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45651834077237,"sku":"ByrdShop_1400068827","price":157.27,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781400068821.jpg?v=1781841807","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/in-spite-of-everything-a-memoir-9781400068821","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}