“I’m getting a life’s lesson about grace from my mother in the ICU. We never stop learning from our mothers, do we?”

When NPR Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon began tweeting from his mother’s hospital room in July 2013, he didn’t know that his missives would soon spread well beyond his 1.2 million followers. Squeezing the magnitude of his final days with her into 140-character updates, Simon’s evocative and moving meditations spread virally. Simon chronicled his mother’s death and reflected on her life, revealing her humor and strength, and celebrating the love of family. The world hung on Simon’s every word and his mother’s eventual passing made national news, attracting attention from international news media like the Today Show, The New Yorker, and The New York Times.

Inspired by those famous tweets, in Unforgettable, Simon offers a deeply affecting, heart-wrenching memoir. His mother was a glamorous woman of the Mad Men-era who worked in nightclubs, modeled, dated mobsters and movie stars, and was a brave single parent to young Scott Simon. Simon’s memories are laced with her humor and strength and gives voice to the experience we all have of confronting our parents’ deaths. Unforgettable is one man’s moving tribute to his mother’s colorful life and graceful death, but it is also a powerful portrait of the universal bond between mother and child.