Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House for gifting me a digital ARC of this memoir by Danielle Geller. 3.5 stars.
"You're an alcoholic," grandma would tell me, even when I was very young. "You just haven't had your first drink." This pretty well sums up the cycle of alcoholism, abuse and mental illness in this story. When Danielle's mother is dying in a Florida hospital from alcohol withdrawal, Danielle travels there and collects a few boxes of family material that her mom had saved. She tries to put together the picture of her family history from these documents, traveling back to the Navajo reservation where her mom was raised. We also see how Danielle's dad came in and out of her life, bringing abuse, neglect, and trouble along with him.
This was a difficult book for me to read. The generational cycles of alcoholism combined with horrible choices, mental illness and abuse are well laid out. However, the book went between the present as Danielle was exploring her family history to the past, but it wasn't always sequential or easy to follow. For example, one chapter would have her sister homeless and addicted to drugs; the next, she'd be in her home with a job. I never quite understand how or when that happened. Also, and this could definitely be an ARC issue, the footnotes didn't seem to make sense with the spot they were listed. Danielle had a great heart and wanted to help everyone, which also caused her to be an enabler - although that certainly isn't an easy line to straddle. The fact that Danielle made it out of this family a contributing citizen is certainly a bright spot in this tale.
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