Ashley Brown

PRAISE & PRESS

Conversations with Ashley about Letters to the Daughter I'll Never Have

PRAISE FOR
LETTERS TO THE DAUGHTER I'LL NEVER HAVE

Letters to the Daughter I’ll Never Have by Ashley Brown is a heart-opening wonder: a meditation on family, real life, marriage, friendship, and the bittersweet truth of a road not taken. She has beautifully and thoughtfully captured the anguish, rumination, clear-eyed hope, and grief in approaching one of the most important decisions we humans can make: to have or to not have children. Her willingness to be vulnerable is what makes these pages shimmer. This book moved me in unexpected ways. I already want to go back and read it again.

—BETH WOOD, award-winning singer-songwriter, author of Ladder to the Light and Kazoo Symphonies, winner of Kerrville Folk Festival New Folk Contest

“This book seems to be [Brown’s] calling.”

--ROBIN MACBLANE, Producer AM Ocala Live

“Every once in a while a memoir does more than speak the heart of the author, it voices the zeitgeist of the time and the shared contemplation of a culture. Letters to the Daughter I’ll Never Have offers all of us a conversation with a thoughtful friend who helps us explore the important issue of how we feel about ‘what might have been’ for ourselves, for people we know and for this generation choosing their own path forward as families. It is no wonder Ashley Brown and the book are already gaining national interest!”

--ANNE MCCRADY, Writer and Speaker, Inspiritry.com

As one who made the choice to not have children almost thirty years ago, I found not only resonance but compassion in Ashley’s celebration of all that connects us. Her letters are less about what might have been and more an invitation to look seriously at what it means to love one another, and what it means to choose to be family.

—MILTON BRASHER-CUNNINGHAM, editor for Church Publishing Inc., and author of This Must Be the Place: Reflections on Home and Keeping the Feast: Metaphors for the Meal.

"In Brown’s book, she considers a variety of issues, including how women choose to define their importance and value, creating alternative families, fears about environmental and cultural delicateness and the role domestic animals play in taming the nurturing instinct."

--KEN RAYMOND, Book Editor, The Oklahoman

See full review here: Review in The Oklahoman

Tiffany Yates Martin's bestselling book, Intuitive Editing, is my "Bible" of editing, and I was so honored that she included the first few paragraphs of Letters... as an example of a strong beginning in a book. Any writer or editor needs to have Intuitive Editing in their home library.