Over the course of a year, the two sisters traveled across America-from a commune in New Mexico to the Oregon waterways to the Louisiana bayou to New York City-to capture the images and voices that bring The Grandmother Book to life, and to paint a portrait, in pictures and words, of the grandmother.

The grandmothers in The Grandmother Book range in age from 30 to 117, and their first-person accounts capture the spirit and diversity of grandmothers everywhere. The stereotypical notion of the white-haired woman in the rocking chair gives way to images of active, vibrant women who are more likely found skiing down a mountain, long-distance running, e-mailing loved ones around the globe.

In intimate portraits, readers will meet baby boomers who are skipping into the grandmother role, surprisingly without protest-among them Thelma Mothershet Wair, one of the "Little Rock Nine," who now teaches survival skills at a shelter in East Saint Louis, Illinois; and Jean Cutler Nichols, a Woodstock alumna who runs the not-for-profit Art for the Heart Studios in New Mexico and is still active in the anti-nuclear movement. Other grandmothers show an amazing resiliency and strength of spirit, women like Tsukayo "Sox" Kitashima of San Francisco, who was sent to an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II, and today is a leader in the reparations and redress movement.

Intimate and wide-ranging, familiar yet startling, The Grandmother Book is a vibrant, honest, evolving portrait of grandmothers. Moving, whimsical and surprising, The Grandmother Book is, above all, a tribute to one of our nation's treasures: The Grandmother.