An intensely emotional and redemptive memoir about a mother's mission to rescue her runaway daughters
After a miserably failed marriage, Debra Gwartney moves with her four young daughters to Eugene, Oregon, for a new job and what she hopes will be a new life for herself and her family. The two oldest, Amanda, 14, and Stephanie, 13, blame their mother for what happened, and one day the two run off together—to the streets of their own city, then San Francisco, then nowhere to be found. The harrowing subculture of the American runaway, with its random violence, its horrendously dangerous street drugs, and its patchwork of hidden shelters is captured by Gwartney with brilliant intensity inLive Through Thisas she sets out to find her girls. Though she thought she could hold her family together by love alone, Gwartney recognizes over the course of her search where she failed. It's a testament to her strength—and to the resilience of her daughters—that after several years they are a family again, forged by both forgiveness and love.
What makes Debra Gwartney’sLive Through Thisspecial is its literary precision, its truly startling honesty, and, most of all, its ability to sift through pain and ashes and find—not bitterness—but humor and, always, love. I hope every parent in America reads this wonderful book —Tom Bissell, author ofThe Father of All Things
With four young daughters and a miserably failed marriage,Debra Gwartney moves halfway across the country, to Eugene,Oregon, for a new job and what she hopes will be a new life for herself and her daughters.The two oldest, Amanda, 14, and Stephanie, 13, have a symbiotic relationship so intense they barely know where one begins and the other leaves off.They come to blame their mother for their family’s dislocation, and one day the two run off together—to the streets of their own city, then San Francislã$
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