In my mind, it had been easier to idolize the dead parent and to blame the live one…but she’d left us, of her own volition, and that, I had to admit, wasn’t his fault.

But before the light, there were other forms of darkness, primary among those the periods spent in foster care. Being told that their dad just had to get himself together and they would be home soon, the “care” they got at times bordered on abuse, certainly neglect. In the case of baby Greg, violence was perpetrated; in the case of the girls, sex played a role in shaping their view of life in the “homes” they were consigned to. In one case, Heather innocently strove to please a “smother mother” who clung to her, desperately afraid to be alone. All the while, their pot-smoking father was pursuing numerous relationships with pretty young women; almost any kind of female could apply for life in the basement, as long as she looked young and luridly attractive, not unlike the mother that Heather, Jaz, and Greg had lost. When the youngsters attended her funeral, it should have brought a kind of closure. Prompted by a weird encounter with a Ouija board, they realized that their mother would continue to haunt them until they were able to piece together the circumstances of her violent demise.

Looking at those years of emotional chaos from the security of a stable family life that she has worked hard to attain, and with creative talent bolstered by an MFA in writing, Heather Siegel portrays her semi-orphaned childhood as harsh, eerie, and very real. There’s no doubt that kids who have been warehoused in foster care, who have been left to wonder what happened to a disappeared parent, even kids brought up in families with a parent who was simply mentally ill or addicted or for whatever reason incompetent and inattentive, will feel resonance with Heather’s harrowing but ultimately hopeful coming-of-age saga.