ONE STOP WEST OF HINSDALE

In this memoir, a debut author grapples with lasting effects of childhood trauma in a 1960s-era suburb.

“Who really wrecked our home?” Reid rhetorically asks her deceased father in the book’s prologue, noting that despite that fact that he left her family nearly half a century ago, she still feels hurt by the divorce. Growing up in the early 1960s, the author’s family seemingly embodied the post–World War II American dream: They lived in an idyllic Chicago suburb; vacationed in Nantucket, Massachusetts; and spent weekends playing flag football. However, Reid writes that, even as a youngster, it was clear to her that her mother was troubled, as she made several mysterious visits to the hospital, espoused theories of aliens and UFOs, and believed that “her dead mother walked the earth.” Neighborhood kids, influenced by local gossip, mocked the author, repeating what they overhead from their parents: that her mother was “plain nuts.” As is later revealed in the book’s poignant narrative, Reid’s mentally ill mother was admitted to the hospital’s psychiatric ward on multiple occasions, where she received electroconvulsive therapy. The treatment not only changed her in fundamental ways (“the mother the ambulance brought back,” the author writes, “was not the same lady”), but also transformed her father. He coped with his wife’s illness by abusing alcohol and became increasingly hostile, verbally abusive, and dour, Reid says; eventually, he left and began a second family. This brutally honest and emotionally raw memoir is written as an extended letter from a daughter to her often estranged father. Reid effectively connects her personal story—and her journey toward forgiveness—to broader questions related to childhood feelings of abandonment, confusion, and self-blame. The author is a career educator with a master’s degree in writing and the teaching of writing from the University of Maine, and she’s a skilled storyteller who taps into her childhood self and contextualizes her story within the cultural milieu of ’60s-era suburban conformity, counterculture, and antiquated approaches to mental health.

A touching and absorbing remembrance of the lasting impact of a difficult upbringing.