2009  AML Award: Memoir

Presented to:
Kathryn Lynard Soper

For:
The Year My Son and I Were Born

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The Year My Son and I Were Born begins with the premature birth of Thomas, author Kathryn Lynard Soper’s seventh child. Kathryn is shocked to learn that her tiny new son has Down syndrome, and this diagnosis sends her world spinning off its axis. In this beautifully crafted memoir, Kathryn Soper invites the reader inside her life during the tumultuous year following her son’s birth, and we worry and suffer and question and battle right along with her as the story unfolds. We come to love Thomas, too, as Soper expertly conveys the fierceness of her love for her son—and the ferociousness of her own doubts about her abilities to properly mother him—with candor, power, and grace. But this memoir is not just a story for mothers, or Mormons, or parents of children with disabilities. This is a universal story of courage in the face of shattered illusions, of tested faith and hard-won wisdom. Like all great memoirs, The Year My Son and I Were Born rings true. The Association for Mormon Letters is pleased to present the 2009 award in Memoir to Kathryn Lynard Soper.

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