In a world where there is an ever growing number of memoirs exploding onto the market, be it the solemn, emotional, profound kind (McCourt’s Teacher Man or Didion’s Year Of Magical Thinking) or even the in-your-face, controversial kind (Frey’s Million Little Pieces), there always seems to be room for more of the unflinching rawness of memoirs like Comeback: A Mother And Daughters Journey Through Hell And Back. Come Back runs the gamut from brutally honest and shocking to funny and heartwarming. Here, in the opening chapter, Claire Fontaine is taking her daughter to a drug treatment and rehabilitation center in Eastern Europe.

“Mia will be locked up. She is broken now. Thin, pink scars beribbon her thighs and stomach, her ankles are bruised by a felon’s leg shackles, her wrists by handcuffs. She is medically malnourished and made up like a whore. Inside, she is dark and damaged and gone. I don’t know when I’ll see her again, my one true child. My desperate hope is that she can be repaired, even badly patched. Mostly, though, I simply hope they can keep her. That she does not escape, as she has done again and again and again and again. Each time to do worse things with worse people, criminals finally. The only thing left would be death, hers or someone else’s.”