Alyse Myers’s memoir is very personal, brave and honest.
This memoir was mainly about Alyse Myers’ rocky relationship with her mother. The eldest of three girls, Alyse adored her father, but hated her mother. Alyse was her father’s favorite, but her mother’s jealousy and anger at the attention he paid to Alyse was something that Alyse would carry with her for the rest of her life.
It begins with her mother’s funeral when she remembers a secured wooden box that her mother kept in her bedroom closet. This is the only item in her mother’s apartment that she wants, but she is afraid what it contains and waits to open it 12 years later with her 15 year old daughter present.
Most of the book is a flashback to her years growing up in the 1960’s in a poor section of Queens, New York, when her father was frequently away on business and her mother stayed at home with the children.
I was caught up in this book from the very beginning and couldn’t put it down. The simple prose enlightens us that no family relationship is perfect and that everyone has their ups and downs. Alyse’s fight to find out who she is and to win her mother’s love is a true mark of perseverance and forgiveness. I highly recommend this book.
