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A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
February 2009
On Sale: February 11, 2009
240 pages
ISBN: 0547054475
EAN: 9780547054476
Hardcover
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Childrens
"What makes Debra Gwartneyβs Live Through This special is its literary precision, its truly startling honesty, and, most of all, its ability to sift through pain and ashes and findβnot bitternessβbut humor and, always, love. I hope every parent in America reads this wonderful book"βTom Bissell, author of The 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 familyβs dislocation, and one day the two run off togetherβto the streets of their own city, then San Francisco, then utterly gone. Live Through Thisβas emotionally wrenching and ultimately redemptive as David Sheff βs Beautiful Boyβis the story of Gwartneyβs frantic effort to recover the beautiful, intelligent daughters she cherishes.The harrowing subculture of the American runaway, with its random violence, its horrendously dangerous street drugs, and its patchwork of hidden sheltersβnone of them interested in a parentβs griefβis captured by Gwartney with brilliant intensity. Faced with the unraveling of the family she thought she could hold together through blind love,Gwartney begins the painfulβand universalβjourney of recognizing her own flawed motivations as a mother.The triumph of Gwartneyβs story is its sensitive rendering of how all three, over several years, have dug deep for forgiveness and a return to profound love.
 Media BuzzWeekend Edition Sunday - March 22, 2009
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