Written from the vantage point of a daughter who bears witness to her mother's recurring bouts of clinical depression, this memoir makes a poignant pull at the heart and sticks to the bones. In words that have long dwelled in silence, Nancy Graham recounts her mother's roller coaster journey into the deep dark hell of the disorder, and what it was like to be forced along for the ride.The experience of depression is not an uncommon one, and the emotional and psychological havoc it wreaks upon all members of a family is frequently underestimated. Graham unravels and re-winds the tattered threads of the lives insidiously tangled when mental illness shadows a family. She writes with honesty and compassion, creating a large, clear canvas of family, society, and the medical tumbleweed that mishandled her mother's frequent forays into the unforgiving abyss of a major depressive disorder. Graham's book is about transcendence, creativity, and the complexities of mother-daughter love when the maternal bond is so intangibly severed. It is also about sexual coming of age and discovery. Mostly, it is about salvaging love and the triumph of the Spirit and the will of a girl, moving through childhood and puberty to adulthood, walking a ground that she defines with each step, and the bittersweet legacy of it all.
close this panelNancy Graham is a writer of fiction and non-fiction works, and is employed by the Toronto Public Library.
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