No More Words by Reeve Lindbergh: The Story of Anne Morrow Lindbergh as Told by Her Daugher

Possibly best known as the wife of Charles Lindbergh and the mother of Charles Augustine Lindbergh, Jr., who was kidnapped from his bedroom in 1932, Anne Morrow Lindbergh was an experience pilot in her own right and a published writer.

Taking Care of Parent Also Means Reflecting On the Past

In 1999, Reeve Lindbergh took her mother to live with her in Vermont after Anne Morrow suffered from several strokes and could no longer live alone. This book chronicles that time, which illustrates the emotional roller coaster family caregivers experience while taking care of their parent and knowing the ultimate outcome will be death.

Reeve Lindbergh describes how her mind traveled back to her childhood. She shared how her parents were both lovers of the sky, how she felt about her father when he was being called pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic and how she and her siblings were not raised to be racist.

Lindbergh shared how her mother, who loved words, published thirty-three books and how after her strokes and the loss of memory made it difficult for her to speak or write beautifully crafted sentences. Some of the books that Anne Morrow Lindbergh published are:

In her book, Reeve uses her family’s words. She begins each chapter with a poem or a comment from one of her mother’s books. She also includes unpublished poetry written by her sister Anne, who passed away from cancer.

Also published in the book are some of her Reeve's mother's unpublished writings. An example of one of those pieces is about the stars in the sky and seeing the Dipper, Orion’s Belt, the North Star, and other constellations. Her mother ends the piece, “So dazzling was the spread of the constellations that it had the impact of a vision, of some hidden insight. I drove home saying to myself: The dead, too, are like this, blazing within us - - invisibly.”

This book is a beautiful tribute to Anne Morrow Lindbergh from her daughter. The book brings the reality of a parent's death to forefront, but shows that not even death can take away the deep love between mother and daughter.

Jun 11, 2009 7:55 PM

Guest :

I'm sorry, but revisionist history is holocaust denial. The record is clear that Charles Lindbergh was an ardent Nazi-supporter and that Anne chose to go along out of loyalty to her hero husband. Seems like ancient history now but it wasn't at the time - it was big news and the couple was rightfully reviled for their sympathies. Anne Morrow Lindbergh had much tragedy in her life. She was a beautiful voice, a compassionate and intelligent women. However, she chose her path, to stand by a mercurial genius, at first, her "hero" and later, a cruel and self-absorbed character who now appears autistic spectrum in his inability to love or engage in normal relationships. No doubt Anne's children consider her their loving mother, their guardian angel. However, the truth is that if you have ever been raised in the middle of such a relationship, you will inevitably face a therapist who questions your adoration of a parent who ultimately neglected to protect you from a cruel partner/parent. Anne neglected to protect her children from a narcissist. In her biography, it is written that Charles Lindbergh would ask to hold his infant son Charles and would then soothingly grasp him around the neck in a choke-hold. Something wrong there. There are a group of North Eastern detectives who believe that Charles himself, in a sick attempt to scare the women of the house, kidnapped and accidentally killed his own son, letting an innocent man face the executioner as a cover-up. Read the Yankee Magazine article of the late 80's, and beyond. I'm sorry, but I would not support any revisionist biographies of the Lindbergh family, because of their dysfunction and the many little lies that this family perpetuates in order to convince themselves that their daddy hero and their mommy poet/author were beyond reproach. It's the kind of legacy that very dysfunctional people leave their scarred children, to whitewash the family history. I would prefer to read fiction, where you can find some honesty, at least. Even Anne Morrow Lindbergh in her later years had wished for the truth of feeling that she could have experienced if she had been able to write fiction.