On October 13, Mary Pipher will be at Francie & Finch Bookshop in downtown Lincoln to celebrate the publication of a newly updated edition of her book "Letters to a Young Therapist." The event begins at 5:30 p.m. at 130 S. 13th Street, and copies of the book will be available for purchase. Pipher will be on hand to sign them.
It is a homecoming of sorts, though Pipher has never really left. The clinical psychologist and bestselling author has lived in Lincoln for decades, and her ties to the city run deep. She earned her PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1977, after completing a bachelor's degree in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1969. For years she maintained a private practice in Lincoln, taught part-time at the university, and served as a commentator for Nebraska Public Radio. She has also been a Rockefeller Scholar in Residence at Bellagio and received two American Psychological Association Presidential Citations — the second of which she returned in 2006 as a protest against the APA's acknowledgment that some of its members participated in interrogations that amounted to torture.
"Letters to a Young Therapist" was first published in 2003, subtitled "Stories of Hope and Healing." It grew out of Pipher's three decades of clinical work with what the book's publisher describes as warring families, alienated adolescents, and harried professionals. Written as a series of letters to an imagined younger therapist, the book is less a clinical manual than a collection of hard-won observations about how people actually heal. Pipher recommends daily swims for a sluggish teenager, nudges a timid husband toward boldness, and sits with a bereaved parent in their sorrow. The Washington Post called it "a wise and compassionate book." The Plain Dealer said it "just might be one of the most soothing books you'll ever read." The Lincoln Journal Star, reviewing it in her hometown paper, wrote that it "is upbeat. It sees life's proverbial cup as half full."
The new edition, published by Basic Books, arrives with a fresh preface in which Pipher considers how the COVID-19 pandemic and the digital sphere have divided people from their true selves, from one another, and from the natural world. It is a theme that has run through much of her recent work. Her 2013 book "The Green Boat: Reviving Ourselves in Our Capsized Culture" dealt directly with environmental consciousness and activism, and her 2022 collection "A Life in Light: Meditations on Impermanence" reflected on resilience and loss.
Pipher is best known for "Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls," published in 1994, which spent a long stretch on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list and became a touchstone for a generation of parents, teachers, and therapists trying to understand the pressures facing adolescent girls. She has written eleven books in all. "Women Rowing North," her 2019 examination of aging gracefully, was also a New York Times bestseller, as were "The Shelter of Each Other" and "Another Country." Her work has taken her around the world to speak with psychologists, students, health-care professionals, and community groups.
The choice of venue fits the occasion. Francie & Finch has been Lincoln's locally owned bookshop since 2017, occupying a storefront in the heart of downtown, a short walk from the university campus. The shop has built a reputation as a gathering place for Lincoln's reading life — hosting author events, writer workshops, poetry readings, and participating in the First Friday Artwalks that draw people through the city's downtown galleries and businesses each month. It is one of a small circle of independent bookstores in a city that, perhaps improbably for its size, supports six of them. For an author whose work is so rooted in place and community, launching a book there makes a certain sense.
The event is free and open to the public. Copies of the updated edition will be for sale, and those who want to guarantee a copy can pre-order through the shop. For readers who have followed Pipher's career across three decades — or for anyone who has ever wondered what a therapist really thinks about how we live — the evening offers a rare chance to hear her in person, in the city she has called home for most of her life.