by Cris Beam

The Atavist No. 11, January 2012

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Author Cris Beam left her mother’s home at age 14, driven out by a suburban household of hidden chaos and mental illness. Her mother, a distant relative of William Faulkner, told neighbors and family that her daughter had died. The two never saw each other again. Nearly twenty-five years later, after building her own family and happy home life, a lawyer called to say her mother was dead. In this story about the fragility of memory and the complexity of family, Beam decides to look back at her own dark history, and for the secret to her mother’s madness.

Praise for Mother, Stranger:

“I was drawn into this compelling book fast and deep. It’s full of Beam’s usual vitality, and yet almost unbelievably sad.  In her first book, in one unsettling paragraph, Cris Beam contemplates how being abandoned by her mother shaped her relationship with the transgirl she fostered. I’ve never known the rest of the backstory, and now that I do, it’s a stake to the heart.” —Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, winner of the National Book Award

“I read Cris Beam’s Mother, Stranger in one sitting, riveted in place, unable to take my eyes off her words. What shines through this wrenching and clear-eyed examination of a child caught inside her mother’s madness is the writer’s courage, her wisdom, her unshakable compassion.”  —Alison Smith, author of Name All the Animals  

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Read the excerpt on The Huffington Post: “I Thought I Had the Power to Cure Her—I was Wrong”

Read the excerpt at The Awl: “Finding Out”