When she was 20 years old and a sophomore at Brown University, Harrison received a call from her brother Brad, telling her that their mother, Michele, was missing. Three months earlier, Lindsay and Michele had had an argument, and Michele tossed her out of the house to live with her father, Richard. She and Brad, and their brother Chris, meet at their mother's apartment to wait for her return.
Waiting becomes a roller-coaster of hope and despair, with flyers posted on telephone poles, tips followed, endless conversations with the police, pilgrimages to all the places Michele Harrison loved to visit, daily check-ins with friends--until, 40 days later, her body is found in the ocean.
Michele Harrison had been through a painful divorce, leaving her embittered and angry. There was no other woman; the marriage was simply over for both Harrisons, and only Richard was able to admit it. Despite a generous financial settlement, Michele continued to use the children, especially Lindsay, to punish their father. After Michelle's death, Richard, remarried and the father of another daughter, tried again to forge a bond with Lindsay, but she was unable to forgive what he did to her mother and "best friend."
Lindsay goes through pills, drugs, a feeble attempt at suicide, alternately lashing out at her brothers and her father and ignoring them. Finally, a bereavement group starts her on the long road out of guilt and grief. Lindsay Harrison does not spare herself in this poignant memoir of a young woman's passage through loss. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.