Summary of Anderson Cooper & Gloria Vanderbilt's The Rainbow Comes and Goes is the result of a year of email exchanges between a son and his mother. They explore themes of life, love, and loss. When Vanderbilt was nearing her ninety-first birthday, she was hospitalized with a respiratory infection. This led Cooper to consider her mortality and to wonder if he and his mother knew one another as well as they could. After the untimely death of his father when Cooper was 10 years old and the suicide of his brother Carter when Cooper was 21, Vanderbilt and Cooper formed a close bond. Yet Vanderbilt, who had been born into a famously wealthy family, had revealed little to Cooper about her difficult upbringing. So, on the occasion of her upcoming birthday, the pair began a year-long correspondence in which Vanderbilt explored her childhood and life...