SUNDAY CAME EARLY THIS WEEK is the story of a severely disturbed, brilliant adolescent girl and the therapist who saw her through periods of self-destruction, a psychotic episode, and bouts of anorexia, restoring her to health. Readers will find themselves caught up in the heroine’s struggle as she fights the temptation to give in to her illness; in her sense of humor and wit; in her ability to describe in graphic detail what is going on in her mind; and in the gradual reaching out to a therapist whom she fears to trust. Here, two human beings are engaged in a life-and-death struggle.
“In one rather dazzling book, Luleen S. Anderson has allowed us to enter the personal world not only of adolescence but of psychotherapy as well. Rarely does one find in a single volume such clinical insight and, more importantly, respect for the human story. Sunday Came Early This Week is that rare blend of disciplined social science training and respect for the human song.”
– Thomas J. Cottle, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School
“Luleen Anderson has written a book that poignantly captures the struggle of a troubled adolescent as she moves from hatred of herself toward discovering herself… It is a masterful weave of poetry and clinical process.”
– Margaret Frank, CSW, Past President, American Orthopsychiatric Association
“Therapists will recognize their patients in Becky, themselves in Amanda. Others will read this book with fascination.”
– Joy Browne, Ph.D., Psychologist, Radio and TV personality
“One becomes personally involved in this drama. I found the book difficult to put down…”
– Frances Kaplan Grossman, Ph.D., Boston University
“Amanda Adams is a child psychologist who takes on Rebecca Crawford, a periodically psychotic, anorexic, gifted 17-year-old. Luleen Anderson, herself a Boston child specialist, does a great deal to humanize – to demystify – some of our notions about “the therapeutic relationship.” A good relationship, in other words, is a good relationship, despite its limits, and can heal deep wounds. What is most instructive about Anderson’s book is that it is a tribute to how adolescence can be simultaneously a state of grace and a state of extreme pain.
“If “Sunday Came Early This Week” is not as popular on Wellfleet this summer as Judith Rossner’s “August,” still this accessible little volume about a nine-month relationship between an inordinately skilled therapist and her teenage patient is a respectable rival to “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.”
– Susan Monsky, Boston Sunday Globe
“Luleen Anderson may have written the sequel to Hannah Green’s I Never Promised You a Rose Garden for the coming generation of students…This writer knows of no other volume which illustrates the best current clinical practice so succinctly in language which a layman can understand…Luleen Anderson possesses the rare ability to select vignettes which capture the range and intensity of human emotion, and the book is scattered with these beautiful crystals. The jewel of this engaging work is the characterization of Amanda Adams. It is a pleasure to discover a professional ego ideal in a book!”
– Harriet Meek, LICSW, Smith College – Studies in Social Work
Sunday Came Early This Week is selected for Honorable Mention, 1983 education Award, Delta Kappa Gamma.
“…a drama which is enlightening, instructive, and inspiring. While this story centers on a clinical relationship, the language is consistently simple and direct, clear and concise, with no hyperbole…While this book centers on one adolescent, the message of hope and triumph is directed to all teenagers and their parents in the perennial struggle from dependence through independence to interdependence. For educators, the book offers a clear-cut therapeutic model for dealing with suicidal youth and their distraught parents. Apart from the tragic aspects of Becky’s saga there are some rare insights into the mind of a gifted child and, consequently, into the education needs of the gifted.
– Margaret J. Lehrer, Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin