After Effects

A Memoir of Complicated Grief

University of Minnesota Press 2022

Foreword INDIES 2023 Book of the Year Awards Honorable Mention, Grief/Grieving category

To grieve after a profound loss is perfectly natural. To be debilitated by grief for more than a decade, as Andrea Gilats was, is something else. In her candid, deeply moving, and ultimately helpful memoir, Gilats tells her story of living with prolonged, or “complicated,” grief, and offers insight, hope, and guidance to others who suffer as she did. 

In this illuminating, thoughtful and beautifully written memoir, [Andrea] Gilats takes us on her journey as she experienced, for 10 years, prolonged or “complicated” grief. After Effects is partly self-help for those with prolonged grief who don’t know what is wrong with them when people tell them to “move on.” It’s also a story of a strong, educated woman who is willing to share her experiences to help others. And it’s a meditation on eternal love. When you finish the last paragraph you are going to think, “I’d like to meet this woman.”

—Mary Ann Grossmann, books editor, St. Paul Pioneer Press

Radical Endurance

Growing Old in an Age of Longevity

University of Minnesota Press
forthcoming November 2024

One May morning shortly before her seventy-fifth birthday, Andrea Gilats awoke to a startling, sudden spike in consciousness that she was about to leap from older to old. Radical Endurance is the story of the reckoning that followed, a candid, clear-eyed journey of discovery through the pitfalls and possibilities of aging. Facing the realities of her age, Gilats explores her fears of failing health and loss of independence while navigating the terrain of an ageist culture. But among such troubling uncertainties, she also encounters the singular pleasures of “growing up again,” of finding fresh and unexpected ways of understanding herself and making meaning during this new era of her life. Radical Endurance is a guide and a companion through the experience of growing old as well as an unconventional coming-of-age story, celebrating a new stage of life when we need it most.

Radical Endurance is one of those books that I didn’t want to put down. Every page offered a new insight and personal gift that I felt in my heart and mind. Andrea Gilats shares both her vulnerability and hope for aging through beautiful stories and reflections in a way that is relatable and heartfelt. A must-read for anyone who is aging (which is all of us).

—Tracey Gendron, director, Center on Aging, Virginia Commonwealth University; author of Ageism Unmasked: Exploring Age Bias and How to End It