Description

In 1962 eight-year-old Nancy saves her little sister, Susie, from drowning in a swimming pool. Five years later, Nancy is diagnosed with a severe mental illness and Susie embarks on a lifelong journey to repay the debt, a boundless mission that drags her into a different kind of deep water. Mad Sisters explores the devastating shifts in a family struck by mental illness — the tragedy of an adolescent girl with so much promise, discouraged parents who eventually start a new life elsewhere, and the jarring comparison between a free-spirited little sister and the trapped caregiver she becomes. 

The memoir slips back and forth in chronology over fifty-eight years, underlining how the past has infused the present with the heavy history the narrator, Susie, has dragged with her. Susie’s ongoing attempts to save her sister draw her deeper and deeper into the caregiver’s push-pull whirlpool. There are moments when Susie is furious with Nancy’s belligerent moods and others when she is flooded with sympathy and guilt. Why her and not me?

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Excerpt

The pool was a choppy sea of bouncing children. I gripped the rough cement and edged closer to my sister who was looking in my direction from the deep end. She didn’t wave back. Water covered my shoulders, my neck and then my chin. Standing on tiptoe, I reached for the floating line of red and blue flags. A tidal wave from a human cannon ball ripped my other hand from the edge and my toes could no longer touch bottom. I flapped my arms and screamed, but the cry was drowned out by squealing children. My sister’s face flashed before me. She had moved closer to the red and blue floating flags and was treading water effortlessly, the usual blank expression on her face. Didn’t she see that I was in trouble? My heart sank with the possibility that she mistook my wild thrashing for swimming. I swallowed more water and slipped below the surface …