Sarah Beth Childers is from Huntington, West Virginia, and she lives and writes in Richmond, Indiana, where she is a writer in residence at Earlham College. Previously, she served as a lecturer at West Virginia University and as a visiting professor of creative nonfiction in the low-residency MFA program at West Virginia Wesleyan College.

Introduction. 1. An Overview of Filial Therapy and Group Filial Therapy. 2. The Selection of Suitable Participants and the Intake Process for GFT. 3. Guidelines for Conducting Successful GFT Groups. 4. The Main Skills Parents Learn in GFT. 5. Starting the GFT Program: Meeting 1. 6. Starting Play Demonstrations and Skills Learning: Meeting 2. 7. Continuing Demonstrations and Skills Practice: Meeting 3. 8. Continuing Demos and Skills Practice: Meeting 4. 9. Mock Play Sessions and Preparation for Practice Play Sessions: Meeting 5. 10. Beginning Practice Play Sessions: Meeting 6-7. 11. Parents' Second Practice Play Sessions: Meetings 8-10. 12. Transition to Home Play Sessions: Meetings 11-12. 13. Early Home Play Sessions: Meetings 13-15. 14. Generalizing Play Session Skills and Preparation for Ending: Meetings 16-19. 15. Ending the GFT Program: Meeting 20. 16. Applications of the 20 Week GFT Program. References. Appendices 1-21. Index.

Sarah Beth Childers grew up listening to stories. She heard them riding to school with her mother, playing Yahtzee in her Granny's nicotine cloud, walking to the bowling alley with her grandfather, and eating casseroles at the family reunions she attended every year.

In a thoughtful, humorous voice born of Appalachian storytelling, Childers brings to life in these essays events that affected the entire region: large families that squeezed into tiny apartments during the Great Depression, a girl who stepped into a rowboat from a second-story window during Huntington's 1937 flood, brothers who were whisked away to World War II and Vietnam, and a young man who returned home from the South Pacific and worked his life away as a railroad engineer.

Childers uses these family tales to make sense of her personal journey and find the joy and clarity that often emerge after the earth shakes terribly beneath us.