Overview

"This riveting memoir by Laura Davis, the author of The Courage to Heal, examines the endurance of mother-daughter love, how memory protects and betrays us, and the determination it takes to fulfill a promise when ghosts from the past come knocking. When she published The Courage to Heal in 1988, Laura Davis helped more than a million women work through the trauma of childhood sexual abuse. But her decision to go public with her grandfather's incest deepened an already painful estrangement with her mother, Temme. Over the next twenty years, from a safe distance of three thousand miles, Laura and Temme reconciled their volatile relationship and believed that their difficult past was behind them. But when Temme moves across the country to entrust her daughter with the rest of her life, she brings a faltering mind, a fierce need for independence, and the seeds of a second war between them. As the stresses of caregiving rekindle Laura's rage over past betrayals, they threaten her intention to finally love her mother ""without reservation."" Will she learn what it means to be truly openhearted before it's too late?"

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"""[Being a caregiver to] an elderly parent, especially against the backdrop of a difficult shared past, can be a bruising spiritual ordeal. We who must travel this territory don't need any more sentimental narratives about it. What we do need is the healing medicine of truth-telling, and Laura Davis brilliantly and generously gives it to us. I literally could not put this book down."" ―Katy Butler, bestselling author of Knocking on Heaven's Door and The Art of Dying Well ""This chronicle of estrangement and reconciliation documenting a daughter's slow loss of her mother to dementia and [then] death is really a testament to living and forgiveness. Overcoming a past fraught with misunderstandings and hostilities takes hard work―hard emotional and soul work. Davis masterfully documents this journey while giving the reader a visceral sense of the brevity of time we have in which to let compassion take root. This is a stunning book that shows how, once begun, that rootedness can be nurtured, deepened, and sustained."" ―Sue William Silverman, author of How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences ""When Laura Davis and Ellen Bass published The Courage to Heal, it emboldened a generation of survivors of incest and sexual abuse, likely contributing to the courageous voices for many who are part of today's MeToo and TimesUp movements. In The Burning Light of Two Stars, Davis allows us to know the person behind those pages, and the story behind that story. Nuanced, raw, and candid, this memoir does not designate white hat or black hat characters. Instead, it provides a topographical map through the complex landscape of the mother-daughter relationship at the heart of the story, with characters both noble and deeply flawed on both sides of the equation. This masterful heart-filling book is deeply moving and wise."" ―Betsy Graziani Fasbinder, therapist and author of Filling Her Shoes and Fire and Water ""I quickly ran out of superlatives for The Burning Light of Two Stars because so many scenes grabbed me. From the first page, I was fully engaged in Laura's world and didn't want to put the book down. It was as if she was speaking my story, her mother a mirror of my own. I am certain this wise exploration of mother-daughter dynamics over a lifetime will resonate broadly. As I pored over its pages, I didn't want this beautiful, compelling story to end. And for me, it hasn't: Laura's memoir and all of her characters have stayed with me to this day."" ―Kay Taylor, author of Soul Path Way ""Laura Davis has a unique ability to capture the details of everyday life in vivid color, as she allows the reader to shadow her on this intimate, challenging, and often humorous family journey. The emotional range of the book is a major strength: frustration, fear, rage, joy, absurdity, humor, love, hate, melancholy―it's all there. It's a fabulous read."" ―Talin Vartanian, producer at The Sunday Edition and creator of Canada Reads, CBC Radio ""Laura's story is important because it captures, with authenticity and supreme honesty, the vexed, complicated and tender mother-daughter bonds and because it doesn't hold back the daughter's ambiguity, resentments, wavering, love-hate sentiments. The sincerity through which the story is conveyed took my breath away."" ―Rosa-Linda Fregoso, professor emerita of Latin American and Latino studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, and coeditor of Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Am�ricas ""Reading this book changed my heart and inspired me to pick up the phone and call my mother for the first time in eighteen years."" ―Hollye Dexter, author of Fire Season and coeditor of Dancing at the Shame Prom"

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