NEARER THAN THE SKY

A young woman is forced to confront a long-held family secret: that her mother suffers from the mental illness known as Munchausen syndrome.

When Indie (Miranda) Brown is awakened in the middle of the night by a frantic phone call from her sister, Lily, she is not at all surprised. Midnight phone calls informing her that their mother has once again been hospitalized have become so commonplace that she's not even concerned. That is, until Lily begs her to come to Phoenix because their mother has been "poisoned." Indie leaves her stable and loving boyfriend only to find herself once more plunged headlong into the chaos that surrounds her severely dysfunctional family. Second-novelist Greenwood (Breathing Water, 1999) skillfully interweaves past and present as the trip triggers Indie's memories of a childhood scarred by her mother's neglect and abuse (Münchausen by proxy), as well as by her father's acceptance of that mistreatment. As everyone awaits the test results that will prove whether Indie's mother is being poisoned by her environment (her claim) or is slowly poisoning herself (her doctor's belief), both the results and the questions that go with them are rendered suddenly moot when she's killed in a car crash. Then Indie is shocked to discover that history has begun to repeat itself with Lily and her daughter, Violet, who has "mysteriously" stopped breathing on a number of occasions. A final confrontation between the sisters demonstrates that Lily is not the only one who has internalized the family pathology. By imitating their father's strategy of silence, Indie too is implicated in the cycle of abuse.

Deft handling of a difficult and painful subject, slightly marred by one-dimensional people, but compelling nevertheless.