A chillingly personal and exquisitely wrought memoir of a daughter reckoning with the brutal murder of her mother at the hands of her former stepfather, and the moving, intimate story of a poet coming into her own in the wake of a tragedy. In this profoundly honest and examined memoir about returning to Iowa to care for her ailing parents, the star of Orange Is the New Black and author of Born with Teeth takes us on an unexpected journey of loss, betrayal, and the transcendent nature of a daughter’s love for her parents. Directed by Carole Langer. With Robert Wagner, Del Armstrong, Lillian Burns, Jackie Cooper. A fascinating memoir, American Daughter will challenge your preconceptions and inspire you to examine your own family lineage. Stephanie shares her story with poignant grace and honesty and is an example of strength, courage, and unwavering determination in the face of unspeakable hardship. Dotty dazzled the clientele, and her lifelong passion for socializing resulted in her daughter often being sidelined. The memoir's title is a reference to the fact that on Saturdays, the author and her mother would spend time together, shopping and having ice cream.
Bandit A Daughter's Memoir
Overview
American Daughter A Memoir
'American Daughter–in the tradition of classics like The Glass Castle, LA Diaries and White Oleander–explores in unsparing details the complex interplay between intimate family ties, generational abuse and cataclysmic losses.' – Gina Frangello, Author of ‘Every Kind of Wanting’ and‘A Life in Men’ Editor of The Coachella Review
For 50 years, Stephanie Thornton Plymale kept her past a fiercely guarded secret.
No one outside her immediate family would ever have guessed that her childhood was fraught with every imaginable hardship: a mentally ill mother who was in and out of jails and psych wards throughout Stephanie's formative years, neglect, hunger, poverty, homelessness, truancy, foster homes, a harrowing lack of medical care, and ongoing sexual abuse.
Stephanie, in turn, knew very little about the past of her mother, from whom she remained estranged during most of her adult life. All this changed with a phone call that set a journey of discovery in motion, leading to a series of shocking revelations that forced Stephanie to revise the meaning of almost every aspect of her very compromised childhood.
American Daughter is at once the deeply moving memoir of a troubled mother-daughter relationship and a meditation on trauma, resilience, transcendence, and redemption. Stephanie's story is unique but its messages are universal, offering insight into what it means to survive, to rise above, to heal, and to forgive.
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