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Updated: 12:00 AM Oct 11, 2009
Local Siblings Drawing National Attention for New Book
A Louisa County woman is drawing national attention for a book she and her siblings co-authored, dredging up the pain of losing their parents as children. Amanda Welch says writing the book gave her brother and sisters a chance to re-visit their tragedy and get closer.
Posted: 5:41 PM Oct 10, 2009Reporter: Matt Holmes Email Address: matt.holmes@newsplex.com |
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Saturday October 10, 2009
It's been a long road for Amanda Welch. The oldest of four children who grew up in the New York spotlight, Welch's mom, Ann Williams, was a popular actress on soap operas throughout the 60s and 70s.
But a horrible series of circumstances made Amanda's and her siblings' childhoods much more difficult than most others.
"My father died first," she recalls. "He died in a car accident when I was 16 and then my mom was very quickly diagnosed with cancer after that."
Their parents' deaths left four children to essentially raise themselves.
"It kind of left our family torn apart," Amanda says.
In "The Kids Are All Right," a new book that's getting national attention from everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Good Morning America, Amanda and her siblings discuss their loss and the struggle to move on.
"The story is actually about how we broke apart and all came back together," she explains.
The local tie comes in the late 80s when Amanda, tired of life in New York City, decides to buy a farm in Fluvanna County. The move put hundreds of miles between herself and her siblings, but she says the move actually ended up bringing them closer together.
"One of the reasons I moved to Virginia and bought a farm was so that I could have that same sense we had of growing up, where we could all get together," she remembers.
Amanda's younger brother Dan went through many of the same things growing up; dabbling in drugs, bouncing from home to home. Despite it all, he says he could always count on his sisters to be there for him.
"Everytime I got in trouble at boarding school, [Amanda] was the first person I called," he says. "It wasn't my foster parents or it wasn't whoever I was with at the time. It was always Amanda."
Now grown, Dan works in show business and Amanda makes and sells soap. Both live in central Virginia and they say, as they reflect on the process of writing their book, they learned a lot about family.
"When our parents were alive, we fought like cats and dogs and acted like many siblings do...didn't really appreciate each other," Amanda says. "Going through this hard time really made us appreciate each other, like, we love each other more than anybody else in the world."
For more information on the Welch family and their book, check out their Click here to post a comment.
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