A seven-year-old girl loses her mother to a tragedy no one will explain. This literary memoir spans a lifetime as she uncovers a devastating secret and discovers how memories form a legacy.
On a clear February evening in 1949, Emilie Clothier's world shattered when her mother died in a fiery explosion. For eleven years, she carried fragments of a story that never added up-until she learned the truth: her mother had taken her own life.
Shuttled between relatives and yearning for the mother she remembered, Emilie navigates an emotional coming of age amid the silence surrounding mental illness. Through vivid scenes from her grandparents' Staten Island market farm connected to a Manhattan warehouse to small-town life in the middle of the state, she pieces together her mother's story while building her own life as a teacher, wife, and mother-guided by her mother's lessons.
Taking Care
explores how attitudes toward suicide have shifted from secrecy and shame to compassion, and how a hidden suicide affects families across generations. For anyone who has lost a parent too soon or carried a family secret, this memoir offers recognition, hope, and testament to the legacies we inherit.