Searching for Mercy Street

Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book of the Year “A candid, often painful depiction of a daughter’s struggles to come to terms with her powerful and emotionally troubled mother”—the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Anne Sexton (New York Times). This is an honest, unsparing memoir of the anguish and fierce love that bound a difficult mother and the daughter she left behind. Linda Sexton was 21 when her mother killed herself, and now she looks back, remembers, and tries to come to terms with her mother’s life. Growing up with Anne Sexton was a wild mixture of suicidal depression and manic happiness, inappropriate behavior and midnight trips to the psychiatric ward. Anne taught Linda how to write, how to see, how to imagine—and only Linda could have written a book that captures so vividly the intimate details and lingering emotions of their life together. Searching for Mercy Street speaks to everyone who admires Anne Sexton and to every daughter or son who knows the pain of an imperfect childhood.