Twenty-eight-year-old Stephanie Staal witnessed her parents' marriage dissolve when she was a teenager, but it was another ten years before she confronted the ongoing impact of their divorce on her adult life, and sought out others like herself. "The Love They Lost" draws on Staal's interviews with more than one hundred twenty-and thirtysomething individuals of the "divorce generation". Using a more intimate approach than Judith Wallerstein's bestselling sociological study, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce, Staal creates an impassioned portrait of shared childhood pain and adult struggles with intimacy and commitment that is at once courageous and poignant, and ultimately hopeful.