“Being with Rachel is for readers who want to be reminded why books matter….this is a tough and inspiring and heartbreaking book.”
–Antonya Nelson

“Being With Rachel is a bold attempt to understand not only what memory is, the narrative that makes up our lives, but what love is, what it means to stand by another person no matter what…”
–Mark Doty

“Spare, understated, emotionally honest, this beautifully crafted memoir succeeds on two levels:  both as an extraordinarily moving personal document and as a vital investigation into the nature of memory and narrative.”
–Andrea Barrett

“Being With Rachel is a book of mysteries….most profoundly, the mystery of an unbreakable love between other and daughter.”
–Charles Baxter

“This is an extraordinary book, a thrilling work of creative nonfiction…the book asks extremely serious philosophical questions at the same time that it relates a heartbreaking story of grief and love.  I admire it enormously.”
–David Shields

WW Norton & Company Inc.

“Being With Rachel is on every page a sharp and witty reminder that the face we see in the mirror conceals a mid more unknowable and oddly resourceful than any of us might imagine.”
—Fourth Genre

“Brennan provides readers with a compelling narrative, conveying without bathos how she and her daughter met the challenges that resulted from Rachel’s terrible accident.”
—Publishers Weekly

“…an engaging and well-written book…”
—Library Journal

“Being With Rachel is as much a story of trauma and survival as it is a lesson about how we “write” and “rewrite” ourselves.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“Karen Brennan has written a painfully enlightening recollection of her and Rachel’s past and present that can have no resolution.  These stories of herself and of her daughter, of their friends, of the world at its worst and the world at its best can be categorized as self-help or inspirational or finally what it simply is: literature.”
—The Commercial Appeal

“Inspiring and wise, this book illuminates the hope that we have the ability to transform and change the alchemy of our lives, to turn tragedy into opportunity…balanced with humor and wit, Brennan has created a beautiful story of triumph from tragedy.”
—The Salt Lake City Weekly