Product Description

How does an honor student at one of Los Angeles's finest prep schools–a nice girl from a happy, loving home–trade school uniforms and afternoons at the mall for speedballs in the back of a truck in rural Indiana? How does her devoted mother emerge from the shock of finding that her daughter has not only disappeared but had been living a secret life for more than a year?

Mother and daughter tell their parallel stories in mesmerizing first–person accounts. Claire Fontaine's story is a parent's worst nightmare, a cautionary tale chronicling her daughter Mia's drug–fueled manipulation of everyone around her as she sought refuge in the seedy underworld of felons and heroin addicts, the painful childhood secrets that led up to it, and the healing that followed. Her search for Mia was brutal for both mother and daughter, a dizzying series of dead ends, incredible coincidences and, at times, miracles. Ultimately, Mia was forced into harsh–but–loving boot camp schools on two continents while Claire entered a painful but life–changing program of her own. Mia's story includes the jarring culture shock of the extreme and controversial behavior modification school she was in for nearly two years, which helped her overcome depression and self–hatred to emerge a powerful young woman with self–esteem and courage.

Come Back is an unforgettable story of love and transformation that will resonate with mothers and daughters everywhere.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #541847 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-19
• Released on: 2007-02-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A nightmarish saga of a teenage runaway in L.A. ends triumphantly thanks to love and support from her screenwriter mom and stepdad. At 15, Mia gets involved in a dangerous drug and Wicca scene, stunning her successful, controlling mother, Claire, and stepfather, Paul. But the signs were in place earlier, after Mia's history of being sexually abused by her biological father, a violent, vindictive drug user whom Claire left with difficulty. Sent to Indiana to live with Claire's sister, Mia starts using cocaine heavily and even gets arrested. When the destructive behavior (including self-mutilation) accelerates, Claire and Paul send Mia to the unlikely Morava Academy, in the Czech Republic, a kind of Spartan military institution where 50 teens are rigorously monitored and reprogrammed. Meanwhile, back in L.A., the parents undergo an intensive group therapy called Discovery to learn to shed guilt for their daughter's behavior, and also forgive her. Oddly, Morava is soon shut down after allegations of staff abuse, but Mia goes through a brilliant turnaround at Spring Creek Lodge in Montana. Mia's desperate diary entries appear between Claire's lively, angry, sarcastic narrative, allowing mother and daughter to maintain a heart-wrenching, honest dialogue. (Mar.)
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Review
"Best mother-daughter memoir." -- Glamour

"We strongly recommend this powerful mother-daughter memoir...Intense, shocking, and ultimately triumphant..." -- Barnes & Noble

Review
"A nightmarish saga of a teenage runaway in L.A. ends triumphantly. . . . Heart-wrenching, honest dialogue." (Publishers Weekly )

"One of those rare books I could hardly put down until I finished. . . . Brilliant-and often funny, too!" (Leah Komaiko, author of Am I Old Yet? )

"We strongly recommend this powerful mother-daughter memoir...Intense, shocking, and ultimately triumphant..." (Barnes & Noble )

"Come Back is a testament to the power of the love between a mother and a daughter." (New York Times Book Review )

"A rare, visceral reading experience....Offering lessons in living, loving, and accepting responsibility that could benefit every reader." (Edwin John Wintle, author of Breakfast with Tiffany: An Uncle's Memoir )

"A powerful and moving story of two brave women who struggled through darkness into the light." (Susan Forward, Ph.D., author of Toxic Parents )

"Best mother-daughter memoir." (Glamour )

Customer Reviews

Your kid may not be a runaway or druggie; you can still learn a lot
The cover shows a little girl, aloft. Her mother's open hands are at the bottom of the photograph. It's a lovely, joyous picture. And one that every parent can relate to. Because the picture is a complete metaphor for our idealized relationship with our kids --- we launch our children heavenward, and revel in what we see: beautiful purity backed by a pure blue sky. What comes next is certain --- we'll catch them. Without fail. Because that's our first, our most important mission in life: to serve our children and protect them until they're able to take flight on their own.

But in Chicago, in the early '80s, Claire Fontaine --- for legal reasons, a pseudonym --- makes a seemingly innocent mistake, the kind made by any number of young women in love: She marries the wrong guy. Nick is a Golden Child of Mayflower stock. Well, not so golden. He smokes as much dope as he grows. And his family has views about sex that are --- well, "progressive" might not be the right word for it. "Sick" and "incestuous" come closer.

Claire and Nick have a daughter, Mia. Nick, who has long enjoyed nude gardening, now likes to wander about the house in the buff, pressing his two-year-old daughter against him. Clair objects. Nick has a stunning comeback: "Sex isn't something children should be protected from, Claire. It's like protecting them from good food or music." And, soon, he moves on to abuse his child. And, of course, to beat his wife and wreck their home.

Claire is confused, numb, slow to bolt. Taking Mia to the doctor is a defeat --- the pediatrician, impressed by Nick's name, defends him. Judges prefer more tests to making definitive rulings. No professional cares to hear from Mia, who remembers everything and is now terrified of her father. Finally --- at great length --- Nick is ordered to undergo therapy as a condition of seeing his child. He declines.

When Mia is five, Claire meets Paul. He is handsome and decent, and he loves Mia the way a father should. Off they go to Los Angeles, where Mia becomes a top student at a prestigious private school and Claire establishes herself as a screenwriter. The past? Buried.

But life turns out to be like a horror movie; when you least expect it, the monster returns. When Mia is 15, she runs away. Her true friends and her real life, she says in the note she leaves behind, are on the streets. Oh, dear parents, don't worry: "I have a Swiss army knife and mace."

Right. A double life. Claire and Paul have missed it. The weight loss, the red faces, the pictures of dead punk heroes and books about street kids --- hey, she kept her grades up. And now Mia's off in the rain, probably to Venice Beach, where castaways find free drugs in exchange for free sex.

It gets crazy from here. How low can a girl fall? To a van. To skinheads. To heroin. And the thing about the bottom...well, as Emmylou Harris sings, "One thing they don't tell you about the blues/When you got em/You keep on falling cause there ain't no bottom/There ain't no end." There's always worse, always greater degradation.

It hurt me --- I mean: physically --- to read this stuff. I wanted to kill Nick. To shake Mia. Claire? I don't know. I'm a parent. Of a daughter. Mostly, I kept muttering, "Please, God, not me...."

But then there's sunlight: a tough love school run by Americans in the Czech Republic. It's like a jail. You don't talk without permission. You earn tiny privileges by observing the rules to the letter, go back to square one if you screw up. And the administrators are in your face 24/7.

But do not think for one second that this is a story about the reclamation of screwed-up teens. This is a book about families, and the parents are on the hook too. Indeed, they're on a much bigger hook. For not only must they learn how to adjust whatever behavior that contributed to their kids' spectacular delinquency, they must learn to relate to the very different child who will be coming home. In short, they must undergo a mirror of the therapy their kids are getting.

I don't think I'm the only reader who --- at midpoint in this book, when the therapy kicks in --- stops reading a book about Mia and Claire and starts reading one that's much more personal. There are no spectators here. Some of the failings you're reading about --- if you're like me, they're yours too. And so the book morphs into a harsh, raw and yet altogether loving confrontation. A wake-up call. With a message that comes down to this: Look at what's there. Look how you deal with it. Look how it affects others. And, hardest of all, look what you get out of it.

To say there's a happy ending of this joint memoir is wrong. There's a happy beginning. When you get to the end, you'll want to cheer.

You don't have to be a parent with a death-bent kid to need this book --- just a parent who knows it's possible to communicate better with your child, but doesn't know quite how. Which is pretty much all of us.

I couldn't put this book down
We purchased this book based on recommendations from a parent forum associated with residential schools. Our daughter is currently in one of these schools so we read it with intense focus. Not only did this book give us a perspective that was interesting and informative to us, it is also very well written. I picked it up on Friday morning and finished it on Saturday evening using every waking minute that I was not busy with work or chores.

This book depicts the school environment quite accurately. We are very grateful that these residential schools exist, and grateful for this wonderful book.

Difficult but true
This memoir was one of the hardest books i have ever had to read and I am a big reader of this genre.

The story of a mother who does not seem her 15 year old self desctruct in front of her own eyes. Is nothing short of brilliant.

What I liked most was the raw honesty in this book. From the compelling beginning where the parents admit they "never had a clue" (scary) to the denial that anything was really bad to admitting that life was never going to be the same again.

A wonderful read.