Product Description

Separated from her mother at an early age, Tara Elgin Holley became her mother's legal guardian at age 16 and set about trying to rescue the blonde fairy princess she remembered from the shambling street person her mother had become. An inspiring story of one woman's struggle to struggle through the pain to reach a better understanding of her mother, herself and a devastating mental illness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1005105 in Books
• Published on: 1998-07-01
• Released on: 1998-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 369 pages

From Library Journal
Formerly blamed for the illness, the families of schizophrenics are now more likely to be viewed as facilitators of treatment and healing. These first-person narratives provide insights into how two families coped with this devastating mental disease, which affects about one percent of the population. Neither provides easy answers, and those needing specific guidelines should consult Kim Mueser and Susan Gingerich's Coping with Schizophrenia: A Guide for Families (New Harbinger, 1994). Holley offers a moving account of how her distinguished and eccentric Southern family reacted when her mother, Dawn, was stricken. Missing fathers, well-off maiden aunts, and tales of child abuse and growing up in the 1960s deepen a story that reads like a well-written family saga. The author, who assumed responsibility for her mother's care at a young age, and her husband, a freelance writer, discuss relevant themes surrounding this disease (the mystery of its causes, the promise of drug therapy, the failure of deinstitutionalization, and public ignorance and prejudice) in the context of Dawn Elgin's life. Simon's Mad House is a more disturbing book. The journalist-author's brother and sister were schizophrenic, but according to this harrowing account her whole family was victimized by the disease. Combining personal experience with up-to-date research and interviews with other siblings, Simon emphasizes schizophrenia's terrible toll on immediate family members, including guilt, anger, and lifelong financial and emotional burdens. The book concludes with a set of recommended readings. Both books will appeal to relatives of the mentally ill and will educate others; Holley's in particular should fascinate a more general audience. Recommended for public libraries.?Antoinette Brinkman, Southwest Indiana Mental Health Ctr. Lib., Evansville
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
This poignant memoir casts light into the tangle of misinformation and misunderstanding about schizophrenia. Dawn Elgin was a promising jazz vocalist in 1940s Hollywood, but mental illness destroyed her career as well as her capacity to care for her tiny daughter. Raised by maternal relatives, Tara Elgin took over as her mother's legal guardian at age 16. By 1980, when single-parent journalist Holley met singer and bookstore salesperson Tara (now development director of Austin's art museum), Dawn was a street person familiar to hundreds of residents of the Texas capital. The Holleys' study blends the trajectories of Dawn's illness, Tara's childhood and her efforts to improve the quality of her mother's life, changes in scientific and social prescriptions for schizophrenia, and the authors' romance, marriage, and family life. Especially helpful for readers dealing with a family member's schizophrenia; also enlightening for those observing this devastating illness, for now, from the outside. Mary Carroll

From Kirkus Reviews
The utterly absorbing story of a woman's struggle to care for her mentally ill mother, tracing the ravages of mental illness on both the sufferer and her family. Dawn Elgin, Holley's mother, a beautiful and gifted singer, was launching a career in Hollywood when she was suddenly struck down by schizophrenia in her early 20s. She was frequently hospitalized, and the author, then six years old, was sent to live with her caring, if authoritarian, great-aunt in Houston. Dawn's Christian Scientist parents and her sisters largely denied her illness; for her part, the author fantasized constantly about her mother. They were finally reunited when Holley was 11. While she hoped that Dawn would again be her glamorous old self, the reality of her mother's decline mocked such wishes: ``She wore what looked to me like baggy old-women's clothes, a bulky brown jacket and a shapeless dress . . . eyes lowered, she looked up now and then as if expecting someone to hit her.'' From adolescence on, through college, marriage (to a husband who at first knew almost nothing about mental illness), and the birth of two children, Holley struggled to find the best care for Dawn. Holley fought to keep relating to the human being, and the mother, underneath the disease that often made Dawn the prisoner of inner voices. She (and in an epilogue, her husband, a former editor of Texas Monthly) deftly teaches us a great deal about schizophrenia, particularly about the isolation, humiliation, and stigmatization the mentally ill still suffer. Yet this highly evocative, moving memoir is less about a terrible illness than it is about a highly unusual, in some ways tortured, but also tremendously strong, daughter-mother relationship. The bond is marked by ambivalence, conflict, suffering--and a daughter's impressive commitment to staying connected to, and caring for, a mother whom she has in some sense lost. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Excellent book that provided much comfort
As a young woman with a mother who has paranoid schizophrenia, this book was invaluable to me. My mom was missing for 12 years, and I received this as a gift not long after finding her (about a year and a half ago). It was personally very comforting for me to read this wonderful book, and I would recommend it to anyone. Ms. Holley's close bond with her mom reminded me of the bond I had/have with mine, and the inherently conflicted feelings that result from that bond.

A must read for anyone curious about schizophrenia
I fell in love with this book from the first page and couldn't put it down. The author takes you through the beginning of a beautiful singing career of her mother to the painful discovery of a life long mental illness. It truely gave me a new understanding of schizophrenia and the affect it has on family and friends.

Moving telling of a difficult story
This was an exceptionally well written memoir, one that must have been very difficult to write. Ms. Elgin moves gracefully along the line between her mother's story and her own, and (it appears) honestly grapples with the ups and downs of both. Thank you.