Short Synopsis
Debra Gwartney's harrowing and deeply personal account of two young girls who are determined to disappear—any parent's nightmare—and the eventual journey back to fierce mother-daughter love.

Full Synopsis
With four young daughters and a miserably failed marriage, Debra Gwartney moves halfway across the country, to Eugene, Oregon, for a new job and what she hopes will be a new life for herself and her daughters. The two oldest, Amanda, 14, and Stephanie, 13, have a symbiotic relationship so intense they barely know where one begins and the other leaves off. They come to blame their mother for their family's dislocation, and one day the two run off together—to the streets of their own city, then San Francisco, then utterly gone.

Live Through This—as emotionally wrenching and ultimately redemptive as David Sheff's Beautiful Boy—is the story of Gwartney's frantic effort to recover the beautiful, intelligent daughters she cherishes. The harrowing subculture of the American runaway, with its random violence, its horrendously dangerous street drugs, and its patchwork of hidden shelters—none of them interested in a parent's grief—is captured by Gwartney with brilliant intensity. Faced with the unraveling of the family she thought she could hold together through blind love, Gwartney begins the painful—and universal—journey toward recognizing her own flawed motivations as a mother. The triumph of Gwartney's story is its sensitive rendering of how all three, over several years, have dug deep for forgiveness and a return to profound love.

"Truly absorbing." ---Library Journal Starred Review

"Joyce Bean's narration portrays Gwartney as a woman on the edge of unrestrained emotions. Bean appropriately expresses the layers of torment the author faces." ---AudioFile

"An achingly beautiful chronicle of unfathomable sorrow, flickering hope and quiet redemption." ---Kirkus Starred Review

"A worthy journey." ---Chicago Tribune

"What makes this book special is...its ability to sift through pain and ashes and find...a little humor and, always, love." ---Tom Bissell, author of The Father of All Things

National Book Critics Circle Finalist

Library Journal Review

Kirkus Review