For Alison

A father’s account of the story that captivated America, the murder of his beautiful daughter, Alison Parker, on live television, and his heroic fight for commonsense gun laws in the aftermath.

On August 26, 2015, Emmy Award-winning twenty-four-year-old reporter Alison Parker was murdered on live television, along with her twenty-seven-year-old colleague, photojournalist Adam Ward. Their interviewee, Vicki Gardner, was also shot, but survived. This was yet another of the national, headline-grabbing gun murders shocking America: the difference this time was that it unfolded on live television, on WDBJ7, a CBS affiliate station, and the video would be shared on other stations and spread over the internet like wildfire. It’s had hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube alone.

In the wake of his daughter’s murder, Andy Parker became a national advocate for commonsense gun safety legislation. The night of the murder, with his emotions still raw, he went on Fox News and vowed to do “whatever it takes to end gun violence in America.” In For Alison, he shares who Alison was, not just a pretty, young reporter, but also vibrant, kind, motivated, with a bright future stolen from her. He also shares what the day of the murder was like, when he called Alison over and over again, always getting her voicemail, and the journey he’s been on since her death: as he’s become a media powerhouse, a go-to each time another shooting rocks the national consciousness; a political fighter, working with crusaders like Gabby Giffords and Michael Bloomberg; a force battling those who say school shootings are fabricated; and a member of the prayer is not enough movement.

For Alison is the most poignant, personal, and proscriptive account ever released from the front lines of America''s epidemic of gun violence, coming at a time when guns are the third leading cause of death for American children.