Advance Praise for Her Mother’s
Daughter
“There is a delicious fictional quality to this
true-life story that I found riveting. In Carroll's deft telling, the book is a
kind of resurrection of a family…. I think I loved Her Mother's
Daughter most for the devotion that Linda Carroll has for her unusual
family through decades of separations and unconventional
journeys.”
- Terry Ryan, author of
The Prize Winner of
Defiance, Ohio
“Looking backward and forward in time, this
haunting memoir tells the story of a young woman’s journey to finding herself,
her birth mother, and her daughter, Courtney Love. The candor and power of these
pages illuminates the difficulties of all mother-daughter relationships, but
offers a rare glimpse into that elemental relationship when it is shadowed by
the temperamental features of early-onset bipolar disorder. Linda Carroll has
grit and grace, and writes like her mother’s daughter."
- Demitri
F. Papolos, M.D. and Janice Papolos,
authors of
The Bipolar
Child
LINDA CARROLL was adopted at birth, raised in San Francisco and only later
discovered that her biological mother is the writer Paula Fox. Married at
eighteen, and twice more before she was thirty, she is now the mother of five
grown children, including singer/songwriter Courtney Love. She is a therapist
and writer and lives in Corvallis, Oregon with her husband of seventeen
years.
Editorial Reviews
Reviews
About the Author
From Publishers Weekly
Carroll, a writer and therapist, bore quite a cross in rearing her fiery, unstable daughter, the rock icon who sets this memoir in motion by trumpeting her pregnancy. Fearing a "curse of the firstborn daughter," Carroll is seized with the urge to seek her own biological mother and mend a tattered matrilineal line. She discloses her past with a sprawling account of Catholic schools, friendships, romances and pregnancies in 1960s San Francisco, in prose mired with detail but often wry and touching. In 1993, after Courtney's rise to fame and stormy estrangement from Carroll, the author finds her biological mother: Paula Fox, the acclaimed children's author who became pregnant as an abandoned teen. The two are kindred spirits, and it's a heartwarming twist that the act of writing, on many levels, becomes Carroll's portal to her past. The promise of dish on Courtney and the emotional reunion with Paula—along with Carroll's tender wit and poignant honesty (Courtney's siblings saw her "as glamorous, but with sharp claws and teeth")—will keep readers soldiering through "
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Carroll, a writer and therapist, bore quite a cross in rearing her fiery, unstable daughter, the rock icon who sets this memoir in motion by trumpeting her pregnancy. Fearing a "curse of the firstborn daughter," Carroll is seized with the urge to seek her own biological mother and mend a tattered matrilineal line. She discloses her past with a sprawling account of Catholic schools, friendships, romances and pregnancies in 1960s San Francisco, in prose mired with detail but often wry and touching. In 1993, after Courtney's rise to fame and stormy estrangement from Carroll, the author finds her biological mother: Paula Fox, the acclaimed children's author who became pregnant as an abandoned teen. The two are kindred spirits, and it's a heartwarming twist that the act of writing, on many levels, becomes Carroll's portal to her past. The promise of dish on Courtney and the emotional reunion with Paula—along with Carroll's tender wit and poignant honesty (Courtney's siblings saw her "as glamorous, but with sharp claws and teeth")—will keep readers soldiering through "
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
“A fascinating, beautifully written
work…Carroll unites the intimate perspective of a psychologist, the
contextual sense of a historian, and the clarity of a fine biographer in one
absorbing package."
—MARTHA BECK, author of Finding Your Own North Star
—MARTHA BECK, author of Finding Your Own North Star
“Anyone who comes to Linda Carroll’s life story will turn
the pages hungrily as they realize that a woman born between two stars
can, perhaps, shine just as brightly.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Linda Carroll has written an honest and tender account
of both her childhood and motherhood, and it soars above
innuendo.”
—HAVEN KIMMEL, author of
A Girl Named Zippy
“An intriguing mother-daughter story…raises
striking questions about genetic destiny, the role of nature versus nurture, and
the complex dynamic created when celebrity is added to that mix.”
—The Los
Angeles Times
The Daughter of esteemed writer Paula Fox
and the mother of
Courtney Love
tells her story
and the mother of
Courtney Love
tells her story
Kirkus Reviews
November 1, 2005
"A surprisingly evocative account"
Library Journal
Nov 2005
By Amanda Glasbrenner, New York
"While one might anticipate an exploitative tell-all from Courtney Love's mother, this is a contemplative memoir of the author's adoptive childhood and lifelong struggle for a sense of herself as both a daughter and a mother. Carroll came of age in the San Francisco of the 1960s, and her tale excellently captures this vibrant, chaotic setting. Carroll proves herself a gifted writer in a compelling read that delicately examines the nature of family, identity, and the links between them. Recommended for all public libraries."
November 1, 2005
"A surprisingly evocative account"
Library Journal
Nov 2005
By Amanda Glasbrenner, New York
"While one might anticipate an exploitative tell-all from Courtney Love's mother, this is a contemplative memoir of the author's adoptive childhood and lifelong struggle for a sense of herself as both a daughter and a mother. Carroll came of age in the San Francisco of the 1960s, and her tale excellently captures this vibrant, chaotic setting. Carroll proves herself a gifted writer in a compelling read that delicately examines the nature of family, identity, and the links between them. Recommended for all public libraries."
Remember Who You Are
Seven Stages
on a Woman's Journey of Sprit
will be published by Conari Press in 2008
