I Dream He Talks to Me: A Memoir of Learning How to Listen

From a Grammy-nominated musician comes a lyrical testament to love and resilience through the lens of parenting her young son, who has nonverbal autism. When Allison’s son, John Henry, stopped using his growing vocabulary just before his second birthday, she knew in her bones that something was shifting. In the years since his autism diagnosis, Allison and John Henry have embarked on an intense journey filled with the adventure, joy, heartbreak, confusion, and powerful love lessons that are the hallmarks of a quest for understanding. In I Dream He Talks to Me, Allison details the meltdowns and the moments of grace, and how the mundane expectations of a parent turn into extraordinary achievements. The saying goes, “If you know one person with autism, you know one person with autism”; no two stories are alike, and yet there are universal truths that apply to all parent-child relationships. With gorgeous prose, Allison shares her and John Henry’s experience while also creating a riveting narrative that will speak to anyone who parents—and who has questioned their own ability to do so. An exploration of resilience and compassion—both for ourselves and for others—I Dream He Talks to Me is also a moving meditation on our place in the world and how we get there; what words mean, what they don’t; and, ultimately, how we truly express ourselves and truly know those whom we love.