Love Is a Burning Thing: A Memoir

by Nina St. Pierre

A riveting memoir about a daughter’s investigation into the wirings of her loving, unpredictable mother

Ten years before Nina St. Pierre was born, her mother attempted suicide by lighting herself on fire. During her mother's recovery in the burn unit, a nurse initiated her into Transcendental Meditation. From that day on, her mother's pain became intertwined with the pursuit of enlightenment.

Growing up, Nina longed for a normal life; instead, she and her brother were at the whims of their mother, who chased ascension up and down the state of California, swapping out spiritual practices as often as apartments. When they finally settled at the foot of a mountain—reputed to be cosmic—in Northern California, Nina hoped life would stabilize. But after another fire, and a tragic fallout, she was forced to confront the shadow side of her mother's mystical narratives. With obsessive dedication, Nina discovered the truth that would eventually release her.

In Love Is a Burning Thing, Nina interrogates what happens to those undiagnosed and unseen. This is a transfixing, moving portrait of a mother-daughter relationship that examines mental health, stigma, poverty, and gender—and the role that spirituality plays within each.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Mental Health, Audiobook, Biography Memoir, Biography, True Story

320 pages, Hardcover

First published May 7, 2024

About the author

Nina St. Pierre is a queer author, essayist, and culture writer. Her debut memoir, Love is a Burning Thing, is a story of fire, family, and what it means to believe. Her features and profiles appear in Elle, GQ, Harper's Bazaar, Gossamer, Nylon, Outside, and more. Nina was a 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Nonfiction Literature. She has an MFA from Rutgers-Camden and lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Sarah Obermeyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was very fortunate to receive an advanced reader copy from NetGalley but all thoughts are unbiased and my own!

I really wanted to like this more, but I don’t this was a memoir that was for me.

The overall story and path of the author left me at loss for words. The author’s strength and resilience was incredible to read about. The dynamic with her mother was truly unbelievable.

However, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the amount of works/quotes referenced through the text. It felt very theory based and academic, I don’t really read memoirs to hear other’s opinions, I want to hear the writers! I don’t mind a quote or two but it was A LOT. I also struggled with this because the author would foreshadow something about her own life through quoting another author/researcher/academic, but it would be pages of another writer’s material before looping it back to her own story. Made it a bit hard to read for me.

The story was great and I really did enjoy reading about the author’s experience. The writing style just wasn’t for me, but that said the truths conveyed in the text were powerful.

[kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love Is A Burning Thing follows the narrative of St. Pierre’s life as she attempts to untangle the mystery of her mother’s peculiar and often flippant behavior. A razor-sharp examination on mental illness (specifically undiagnosed), poverty, and spirituality. I was enthralled in St. Pierre’s prose and found her storytelling to be particularly entrancing. This memoir is intensely evocative; as mesmerizing as watching a fire burn. I would strongly advise adding it to your list of memoirs to read this year.

[Bbecca_marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love Is A Burning Thing by Nina St. Pierre

Thank you so much PRH Audio & Dutton for the free audiobook and gifted copy.

Blurb:
A riveting memoir about a daughter’s investigation into the wiring of her loving, unpredictable mother.

✨ My thoughts:
I honestly cannot believe this is a memoir, what is real life?! I couldn’t put this book down. So when I had to peel myself off the couch to do mom things, I absolutely headed to PRH Audio to snag the audiobook. Both versions are incredible and I’d recommend both! The author narrates the audiobook of that sways you into listening! This book completely broke my heart while opening my eyes. An absolute vulnerable look into St. Pierre’s life, I found myself in shock and emotional throughout this memoir. A must read of 2024, you will not be able to look away.

“I am the metallurgist, transforming alloy into cars. The alchemist rendering mercury to gold. I am perfection and it’s destruction. I am flashover. The whole damn room combusting. I am splitting this town. I am blowing this joint. I am a woman on the run. A neon flash if you blink. We carry all of the story, see. We are the whole thing.”

Love Is A Burning Thing is out tomorrow, 5/7/24!!

Happy reading 📖

[Angela DeMaio]

This book was so well written + pairing the kindle book with the audiobook was such a great experience. If you liked Glass Castle I think you will really enjoy this book!

[Laura A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks Netgalley for allowing me to read this book. Nina mom was not like most moms she had sone issues which followed her through life. I liked the many characters in this book.

[Sarah Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most brave, honest, articulate books I have ever read…and an absolute page turner. It is both laugh out loud funny (in parts) and heart breaking. It is a meticulously researched labor of love with fire and a passion for truth always at the center. For anyone who has experienced complicated love and loss, who has been a mother or daughter, who has a loved one who has been side lined or criminalized for mental illness - THIS BOOK is a must read. Absolutely unforgettable.

[Janai · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sleeper hit alert!! This was ✨phenomenal✨

[Emily Gordy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reader, I am on the floor. This stunning memoir examines a difficult childhood with equal parts compassion and wisdom, seamlessly weaving careful research and thoughtful analysis with a life story rife with tension and trauma — but also love and learning. St. Pierre is clearly brilliant, examining how her mother turned to disparate sources of faith and spirituality to lend reason to her struggles with mental health and poverty. But what struck me even more than her rich insights was the empathy with which she uses them to reexamine her mother and her own trials.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for my review.
In this coming-of-age memoir, Nina St Pierre aims to make sense of her chaotic childhood and her mother's erratic behavior, which includes self-immolation. I found her personal reflections riveting and deeply affecting. Her gift for is writing evident. I am always amazed by the resilience of individuals raised in unstable homes. Instead of anger, St Pierre chooses compassion and understanding towards her mother, which is remarkable.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love is a Burning Thing is a memoir that covers Nina St. Pierre’s childhood and early adulthood being raised by a mother she ultimately realizes likely had schizophrenia. This led to a lifestyle often lived in poverty and often on the move, with a large amount of instability for Nina and her younger brother Chris. Readers of Jeanette Walls’ The Glass Castle will see a lot of similarities. I enjoyed Walls’ book more, perhaps because Jeanette found joy in parts of their life even as she eventually realized that many aspects of it weren’t healthy for a child. In the memoir, St. Pierre questions why she never realized what was different about her mother. A mother who self-immolated, who had delusions, who made her beliefs align with her reality. When a child is raised in that type of environment and knows nothing different, I would maintain it’s not their responsibility to identify and manage it, though it’s not really fair to a child to be that disconnected from what reality is for everyone else. St. Pierre does wander into research mode periodically as a means of explaining what she experienced growing up and what she learned about her mother. I understand this, but feel it would read better if it was purely her experience without professional assessments added in, or perhaps held until the end of the book. There always seems to be a place for memoirs of adults that had unstable childhoods because of poverty, discrimination or mental health issues in their parents. But because of this they have to be really well written and almost have a silver lining to them, and this just didn’t stand out in the crowd for me. A complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Two and a half stars.

I found St. Pierre's memoir a bit disjointed and unfocused, particularly in the beginning. Some sections read like a biography of her mother, parts non-fiction, and others explored her own life. Her non-fiction explanations were my least favorite. Although sometimes relevant, as were her explanations of her mother's New Age beliefs, they sometimes felt skewed. St. Pierre appears to blame herself for not recognizing her mother's mental illness, though she was only a teenager when she began to witness alarming signs. Further, she had a single mother, so there wasn't another adult present to help her. Part of this guilt plays out in her investigation of how mentally ill people were portrayed in books and movies, particularly in the 1990s when she came of age. Being close in age to her, I had seen many of the same movies at similar ages, and while some of her points aren't wrong, it also doesn't seem fair to pin society's misunderstanding of mental illness too heavily on pop culture.

In some aspects, St. Pierre's mother is well flushed out, but in others I felt like I didn't have a full picture of her or how their complicated relationship worked. Perhaps because St. Pierre was a rebellious teenager spending less time at home during her mother's increasing mental illness, I didn't feel the immediacy of of what must have been sad, chaotic times for her.

The final chapters of the book had the feel of a student ending a thesis paper, as if she were struggling to close the story and trying too hard to come to neat conclusions. All in all, this memoir was a bit of a miss for me, though there are interesting glimpses into a troubled woman prone to setting fires.

[Annick · Rating 3 out of 5]

My whole life had been between worlds without a sense of home.

After a failed attempt at suicide, by burning oneself alive holding hands with a girlfriend, Anita survives and goes on to have two children, Nina and Chris.

I cursed every time I’d wished for a new and improved mom, every time I’d wished that we would stop moving, or that I could buy name-brand clothes. If I could have asked my mother for anything then, it would be to stay with me.

Told from Nina’s perspective, this story takes a while to explain the crux of the problem. As we follow this memoir, we learn that life is tumultuous for this family, always moving, never putting down roots. The answer always around the corner, in another city, another job, with a new group of friends. Anita turns to Transcendental Meditation and things become spiritual, even then things do not calm down.

— children like me whose parents devoted their lives to the expansion of consciousness - were born into the belief that enlightenment was within our reach and that we should strive toward it. But many of us didn’t have the real-world structural or organizational support to integrate these ideas.

Love Is a Burning Thing: A Memoir is a portrayal of a mother’s untreated mental illness and Nina’s drive to make sense of it all. Perfect for fans of My Side of the River, The Glass Castle, and Educated.

[Cara Wittich · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an absolute emotional rollercoaster for me. The author is gifted in narrating their story with such beautiful description that you can picture the events unfolding as if you were a fly on the wall. Though sometimes a difficult read (due to the nature of the material), I found myself flying through this book. I applaud the way the topic of mental health was broached; without judgement and through acceptance, though quietly underlining that it is a trying thing to navigate.

Though I enjoyed this book and the story shared, I was not partial to the (sometimes lengthy) quotes and excerpts of other work used to lay the groundwork for what was to come next.

[Lillian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved every page of this book. It is moving, captivating, beautiful, nuanced. I feel like it is a privilege to read the author’s story.

A meditation on mental illness, coming of age, poverty, spirituality, and California—this book is for anyone and everyone.

Plot and structure were tight and gripping. Present-day analysis was artfully woven into every section.

Would recommend to anyone looking to feel a little something.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many parallels between this growing up story and mine, which is what made me want to read it when I first heard about it: mother with mental illness who was a spiritual seeker who learned TM, and a childhood of instability and “simultaneously straddling different worlds”.

I liked hearing her vulnerable yet wise voice narrating the audiobook. The final chapters were extra rich with introspection about her hard-won growth and a generosity towards her mother’s memory that really moved me. Made me reflect on my own complicated inner relationship with my deceased mom and realize it would be powerful to ease up on her and myself. Thank you for that, Nina St. Pierre.

[Connie]

#GoodreadsGiveaway

[amitai bernstein · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good thinker, good writer. Some nuggets of really punchy, impactful lines/thoughts.. but I hated the pacing of this and felt like I was being strung along for some unveiling that never came.

[Ariel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley & Dutton for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

I struggled to get into this book and forced myself to finish it. I felt as if the author jumped around and that left me lost and having to reread parts. I really wanted to enjoy this because I thought it would hit home for me now learning of my own mother's mental health diagnosis and reevaluating my childhood like Nina is doing in this story.

[Meaghan McElroy · Rating 4 out of 5]

really intimate look into mental health, spirituality, poverty, etc etc etc. I think closer to 3.5 stars (there were chunks that felt disjointed and some areas I wish further explored) but still a compelling read.

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The way we grow up sets our definitions of what “normal” is. Childhood prepares us for the way we interpret and react to the world around us: with fear, with enthusiasm, with curiosity, with anger, etc. In Love is a Burning Thing, Nina St. Pierre takes us into a childhood where constant motion was normal, with a mother who saw plots and divinity everywhere, when a young girl had to be the parent as often as not. St. Pierre’s long look back is full of questions about mental illness, faith, responsibility, and (maybe) forgiveness...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.

[Bookreporter.com Biography & Memoir · Rating 5 out of 5]

At the very start of LOVE IS A BURNING THING, Nina St. Pierre reminds her readers that a memoir is not an autobiography but instead “a curated work of memory.” Her memories, she explains, have been curated in order to answer the question that has haunted her: “What was happening with my mother, and why didn’t, or couldn’t, I understand?” While many memoirs center on reflection or even explanation, St. Pierre’s does indeed focus on an attempt to understand. In it, she tries to comprehend the mysteries of her mother, Anita, a loving and compelling yet deeply troubled woman, and come to terms with the guilt she feels for not understanding her better.

The burning in St. Pierre’s title is as physical as it is metaphorical. In 1971, 10 years before her daughter was born, Anita set herself on fire in the kitchen of an apartment along with a friend. The reasons for doing this have never been clear. It most likely was an attempt at suicide but with spiritual undercurrents. The other woman did not survive her injuries, though Anita, who also had stabbed herself, did. She was left physically disabled, but the mental causes, as well as the lingering trauma, for the act are what St. Pierre wrestled with as she tried to fathom her mother’s life.

St. Pierre’s childhood was semi-nomadic, and her time with her father was often in stark contrast to when she was with her mother, who had primary custody. Her parents were lifelong spiritual seekers, meeting through their interest in Transcendental Meditation. When they split, St. Pierre spent vacations with her father and his partner, meditating and vacationing. But her mother’s path was twistier and threaded with darkness. It was only as she grew older that St. Pierre began to recognize signs of her mother’s mental illness, including paranoia and auditory hallucinations.

In LOVE IS A BURNING THING, St. Pierre reckons with her mother’s health and how that impacted her and her younger brother, as well as what her mother may have experienced. The answers may leave her feeling a bit unsatisfied, still lacking clarity about Anita (and thus some aspects of herself), but the result is a moving tale of an intense woman who loved fiercely but was unable to keep her children --- or herself --- safe.

The 1971 self-immolation was not the only fire that directly impacted this family. There were two house fires that changed the trajectory of their lives and upended their security. Throughout the book, St. Pierre is able to use fire to examine and analyze, as well as to connect emotions, responses, fears and hopes.

Without a diagnosis or any mental health treatment plans on record, Nina St. Pierre has been left to sift through her memories, and the memories of others, to understand her mother and their complicated relationship. She also draws on a variety of sources --- some scientific, some religious, some pop culture, some artistic --- creating a collage of ideas and possibilities, questions and ruminations that give the reader much to consider and ponder.

LOVE IS A BURNING THING is so well written, fearlessly diving into such difficult and troubling events and memories, all the while honoring the subject with sensitivity, delicacy and narrative skill. It is a brave journey of self-help and self-resilience, and a fascinating look at the bonds of family and the power of expression.

Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

[Ailey | Bisexual Bookshelf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC!

Full Rating: 4.5 stars rounded up

Nina St. Pierre's “Love is a Burning Thing” is a captivating memoir that ignites on multiple levels. It's a poignant exploration of a daughter seeking to understand the enigmatic and troubled life of her mother, a woman who twice set herself ablaze in acts of self-immolation. St. Pierre transcends the boundaries of a traditional memoir, weaving her personal narrative with a sharp decolonial and class-conscious critique of New Age movements and California history.

This book resonated deeply with me, and I suspect it will with other eldest daughters of mothers battling mental illness. St. Pierre navigates the complexities of parentification and enmeshment, portraying her mother not as a caricature of good or evil, but as a deeply flawed human being. This nuanced portrayal avoids demonization and pathologization, instead seeking empathy, a quality often reserved for "likable" victims. As St. Pierre states, "We need victims to be likable. To receive compassion, we need hurt women to remain docile and needy." By refusing to paint her mother by a single brushstroke, St. Pierre offers a refreshingly honest and pro-survivor perspective.

“Love is a Burning Thing” doesn't shy away from the darker aspects of St. Pierre's upbringing. Her mother's mental illness often translated into housing instability, a layer that underscores the book's subtle anticapitalist message. St. Pierre delves into the history and meaning of self-immolation, questioning the generational patterns often associated with trauma. The exploration is courageous and insightful, ultimately leading St. Pierre to ask a profound question: are daughters destined to repeat the mistakes of their mothers?

St. Pierre's prose is both evocative and elegant, carrying the reader through her introspective journey. Her reflections are insightful and timely, offering validation and empowerment for those who have grappled with similar experiences. The book is particularly compelling for those raised by a mentally ill parent, offering a sense of solidarity and shared understanding. St. Pierre's refusal to individualize blame within her narrative is particularly powerful. She skillfully locates the roots of her dysfunctional childhood within the societal and cultural systems that shaped her mother.

“Love is a Burning Thing” is a powerful testament to the resilience of the traumatized and mentally ill. St. Pierre's journey of self-discovery is one of courage, compassion, and ultimately, liberation. This book is a must-read for anyone who has ever questioned their place in the world, particularly eldest daughters of mentally ill mothers, and anyone interested in the complexities of family dynamics and the allure (and pitfalls) of New Age spirituality. Thank you, Nina, for this fiery book - I can’t wait for the next one.

📖 Recommended For: Readers of introspective and honest memoirs, Those interested in exploring New Age movements and mental illness, Enthusiasts of dysfunctional family representation, Fans of Tara Westover's “Educated” and Chelsea Bieker’s “Godshot.”

🔑 Key Themes: Intergenerational Trauma and Healing, Deconstructing New Age Mysticism, Eldest Daughter Syndrome, Ending the Cycle, Empathy Over Pathologization.

Content / Trigger Warnings: Gore (minor), Fire / Fire Injury (severe), Abandonment (minor), Mental Illness (severe), Death of a Parent (severe), Alcohol (moderate), Toxic Relationship (minor), Domestic Abuse (minor), Abortion (minor), Drug Use (minor), Alcohol Abuse (minor), Suicide Attempt (severe).

[Lolly K Dandeneau · Rating 5 out of 5]

via my blog: https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
𝑰𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒖𝒓𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒉𝒆𝒍𝒅 𝒖𝒔. 𝑰𝒕’𝒔 𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒚, 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒕𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒆𝒅 𝒅𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒓.

Trying to understand our mothers as people can feel like an impossible task, but for Nina, the mystery hides in flames. On November 10, 1971, Nina’s mother, only twenty at the time, lit herself on fire bound together with another woman, a decade before she gave birth to Nina. Lucky to survive, her burns were severe, leaving scars that would crawl over her flesh and stop at her chin, a strange blessing amidst the horror. A year after the episode, her mother became a certified TM (Transcendental Meditation) teacher, devoted to Maharishi and married Nina’s father, both true believers. It is the beginning of chasing transcendental experiences, forsaking comfort, and the usual trappings of life to reach pure enlightenment. It isn’t long before her parents’ marriage is over, and she takes off to raise Nina as a single mother. Men cannot seem to keep her anymore than her devotion to TM can.

Nina comes of age while her mother dabbles in esoteric practices and refuses any person, place or practice that attempts to control her. This memoir is about living in constant motion, as people slip in and out of their lives, the constant becomes Nina and her mother trying to feed her spiritual hunger. Moving to new towns, always the outsider living in motel rooms, it was a social nightmare for a kid at school. A baby comes along when they are living in California, making them a trio when her brother Chris is born. For a time, living is communal, women helping each other “pooling resources” like food, like-minded new age believers, it was nothing to hear talk of aliens. But the comfort doesn’t last. Before, she may not have fully believed in what both her parents taught her (her father was in Texas and big on meditation), but as Nina grows up, becomes more aware of the divide between reality and her mother’s delusions, she begins to feel fear. No one is there to step in and recognize her mother’s mental decline, and even living at the foot of a mountain in California that is believed to be a sacred place ‘between heaven and earth’ will not cure what ails her family. Nina explores the meaning of all these departures, sifting through the reasons why her mother bucked convention, and attempts to understand what sinister force from which she was running. Consumed with a burning passion, fire wasn’t done with this family, glowing on the periphery and showing itself again, leaving destruction, ashes and pain in its aftermath. No one understands the burn than her. The romance of the mystical loses its allure when irrationality reigns supreme and yet there is love. Love may be the only glue keeping her mother together at the seams, for a time.

This is a gorgeous, heart-breaking read about mental illness, spirituality, escapism, family, and growing up between two worlds. Yes, read it!

Published May 7, 2024

Penguin Group Dutton

[Lulu]

Nina St. Pierre's memoir, "Love Is a Burning Thing," is a profound exploration of the intertwining forces of systemic oppression, suffering, and spiritual growth. With the precision of an essayist and the insight of a cultural commentator, St. Pierre examines these themes through the deeply personal lens of her own life story.

The narrative begins a decade before the author's birth, with a haunting and pivotal event: her mother's attempt to end her life by self-immolation. Surviving the ordeal, her mother encountered Transcendental Meditation during her recovery, a practice introduced by a compassionate caregiver. This moment becomes a foundational myth of sorts, setting the stage for the complex, often turbulent relationship between St. Pierre and her mother.

Growing up under the shadow of California's Mount Shasta, a location steeped in New Age spirituality, St. Pierre's childhood was marked by poverty and her mother’s fervent quest for faith. Without a stable foundation, St. Pierre oscillated between different homes and belief systems, acknowledging the theoretical possibilities of everything but unable to commit to any single ideology. Her mother’s framing of spiritual belief as a response to systemic injustice served as both an anchor and a form of detachment. This paradox desensitized St. Pierre to her mother’s eccentricities, manifestations of her deeper psychological issues, and led her to seek solace in destructive habits like drinking.

In "Love Is a Burning Thing," St. Pierre endeavors to unravel the complexities of her past, her mother's struggles, and her own place within that dynamic. Her memoir is a vivid, textured, and often harrowing portrayal of her bond with her mother, characterized by both unwavering loyalty and fragile tension. At its core, the book is about the experience of growing up with a parent who, as St. Pierre eventually understood, suffered from mental illness.

St. Pierre approaches her mother's story with humility and compassion, offering a well-researched backdrop that illuminates the compounding influences of patriarchy and capitalism. These forces, she argues, often drive individuals who defy societal norms to seek solace in religion, spirituality, or even conspiracy theories, in a desperate attempt to create a semblance of safety and control.

By sifting through the pivotal moments of her past, St. Pierre crafts a compelling treatise on mental illness, family trauma, and the dual-edged power of belief. Her work resonates as both a deeply personal memoir and a broader commentary on the societal structures that shape, and often distort, individual lives.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the memoir opens, St. Pierre explains that the carpet in the new house that she lived in with her mother and younger brother burst into flames when they were sleeping with a space heater by their feet. St. Pierre knows a lot about fire. Ten years before she was born, her mother and another young woman lit themselves on fire blocks from the University of Michigan where St. Pierre’s mother had been a student. Her mother incurred third degree burns over most of her body and spent six months in a burn center where a nurse initiated her into Transcendental Meditation.

St. Pierre’s father was a longtime TM practitioner and devotee from a privileged family, and he and St. Pierre’s mother moved to Fairfield, Iowa, the heart of America’s growing TM movement. After three years of marriage and shortly after St. Pierre’s birth, her mother hastily departed because, as St. Pierre later determines, her mother valued autonomy above all else. St. Pierre’s peripatetic childhood is filled with such impulsive decisions -- a string of cheap lodging up the California coast supported by meager child-support and welfare checks – as Nina’s mother pursues enlightenment. “People slipped in and out of our lives like water. It was all an adventure still. Leaving, just part of the game. I hadn’t yet learned that, to my mother, home itself was a moveable thing.”

The family, with the addition of St. Pierre’s younger half-brother, settle in Siskiyou County, in the desolate northern reaches of California, at the foot of Mount Shasta, an area which attracted seekers, mysticism and charlatans. They got by with the support of a network of women “who’d left the Midwest and rebirthed themselves where the land met the sea” and cobbled together jobs in daycare and housekeeping. Her mother was free to embrace “her bushwhacking mashup of Catholicism and everything under the New Age umbrella.”

St. Pierre crafts a vivid memoir of her fragile relationship with her mentally disabled mother while providing a novel way to think about mental illness and family trauma. A heart-rending familial portrait for readers who engage with memoirs of life with a mentally ill parent, such as “The Glass Castle.” Thank you Dutton and Net Galley for an advanced copy of this moving memoir.

[SaraJane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clutter came to represent an underlying sense of turmoil that I couldn't put my finger on, an external manifestation of internal chaos.

When information is untethered from its source, anything can make sense. Without context or the containers we create for story, there is no wall to throw things against, no way to judge it.

Belief becomes stronger than truth. Belief answers more questions. Young children do the same. They are built to perceive their caretaker, the system they rely on, as untrustworthy. If they are neglected or abused or become unsafe, instead of pointing the finger outward, they often internalize and blame themselves. Psychologically, it's safer and more empowering to understand that you have done something wrong than that the person tasked with your care is, at best, unstable, at worst, malicious. When the person we are surviving is also the one who nurtures us, an unbridgeable schism emerges between true and untrue, between possibility and necessity..... we are not meant to believe that our provider is unstable or, at worst, extractive. Our mind simply refuses it. What cannot be true then, simply is.

My whole life had been between worlds without a sense of home.

Our work is always there waiting for us. That nothing, and no one, can shield us from the work of untangling our inheritance.

Everything is for sale, but for those without money and power, belief is the most potent currency.

Some part of me didn't believe that I deserved true stability, or maybe I just couldn't stomach it yet. The only way I knew to be at home was in motion.

It's easier to say goodbye to one part of a person you love, than to accept that they could be, that they are, terror and beauty in one. But maybe this is our work, to allow it all to exist at once. Maybe every complicated story, every contradictory, impossible, uncapturable, untellable story, is our chance at God. Every time we let many things be true at once, maybe that is God.

Our histories speak through us. If we are lucky, we get to transmute their broken bits into something complete to fuse the fragments into a whole.

[Jackie Sunday · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a personal account of Nina’s life influenced greatly by her unsettled mother who moved her two kids often.

She begins by telling readers the dramatic story of her single mother, Anita, who spent six months in a burn center after setting herself on fire with a friend while enrolled in college at the University of Michigan. She had third degree burns and was only saved because a firefighter carried her out of the house in a blanket. Anita was immediately sent to the hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan. That left me with a lot of unanswered questions: why?

Anita, a Catholic, was desperate for some type of therapy and gravitated towards spiritualism to raise her consciousness. She became a Transcendental Meditation teacher in the early 70s while on a visit to spread the word in Miami and met Nina’s father. They got married, had a beautiful daughter and then split up. Anita took Nina to San Francisco and moved again to a small northern town near Mount Shasta. Nina said it was where ranchers, hunters, New Age renegades and rednecks gathered. Many had drugs and guns. It sounded like the Wild West.

She gives the reader a clear sense of what it was like to be raised by a mother with unnoticeable mental health issues at the time. While Anita was very loving following the mantras of peace and kindness, they were very poor. They moved often which was difficult. Nina’s father, however, was always a phone call away.

It's a coming-of-age story where the reader feels the effects of various hardships in an unstable environment from day to day. While the chapters were well written, it’s depressing and starts to get wearisome until the very end when she pulls all the pieces together. I was amazed at all the details Nina remembered from her childhood. While in some ways, I felt sorry for her, she was always loved.

My thanks to Dutton and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book with an expected release date of May 7, 2024.

[Danielle | Dogmombookworm · Rating 4 out of 5]

LOVE IS A BURNING THING |

Thank you @duttonbooks #partner
This is out now!

The author's mother engaged in an immolation with another girl when they were students in college. They sat down, wrapped themselves in wrapping paper and lit themselves on fire. The firemen and police came upon them seated on the floor, screaming into each other's faces but not trying to put the fire out.

The author had known bits and pieces of that incident since she was very young. Her mom always wore something to cover the burn marks and was fortunate to only have the marks show between below her neck to above her knees.

The author and her brother were accustomed to moving a lot as kids. Their mom would pitch a house for a few months and then pack it all up in a working car only to abandon it when the car died to start all over again. For the most part, they attributed this to just the quirkiness of their mom. But their mom was also hiding in plain sight with a very serious mental illness.

It's particularly hard to imagine children obedient to their sole parent by default, not knowing that in some cases, this may not be in their best interest or anyone's best interest. Neither child has the language or understanding to explain why their mother may act 'off' at times, nor do they consider that it may not be safe. A lot of the book is sorting through the artifacts of what's left and putting actions into a storyline that makes more sense retroactively, but also to illustrate that these past traumas were hauntings that ebbed and rose over time. History repeats itself. On the other hand, what is beyond a doubt is that their mother did love them which seems counter to all that we espouse a 'good' parent should be and do, but you can tell that having her kids and keeping them close to her was what provided her life meaning.

It was a transfixing read.

4.25

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this sharply vulnerable and vivid memoir, Nina St. Pierre takes readers through her life as she's tried to piece together and understand the woman that was her mother. As a child, Nina grew up with her younger brother Chris in northern California, moved from home to home by their mother. A decade before Nina's birth, her mother and her friend chose to set themselves on fire - and in the aftermath of her recovery, became a devout believer of Transcendental Meditation. It would continue to embed itself in her daily life, causing unfathomable repercussions for her family's lives in the years to come.

I was engrossed in this story from the very first page; Nina St. Pierre's writing style is enthralling and immersive, and she paints such descriptive settings and people with her prose. Although this is a memoir, the book is equally an exploration and dedication for her a mother: a complicated and multifaceted individual. We get to see the moments of her paranoia and delusions, when she weaves stories and conversations that never happened, but also her moments of love and dedication to her children, simply doing her best as a single mother to raise her two children. It's only in the years after her mother's unexpected passing that Nina is able to try and piece together the whys of her mother's actions, and brings to light the gaps in recognizing and treating mental illness even in the present day.

This is a weighty, and at times dark, read that doesn't follow the typical chronological timeline, but I appreciated the depth of emotion and additional research Nina St. Pierre included in her work.

Thank you Dutton Publishing for the advance copy of this novel!

[Jodell · Rating 4 out of 5]

NINAS MOTHER:
Love is a burning thing
And it makes a fiery ring
Bound by wild desire
I fell into a ring of fire
I fell into a burning ring of fire
I went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire the ring of fire
Johnny Cash

NINA THE DAUGHTER
They asked me how I knew
My true love was true
I, of course, replied
"Something here inside
Cannot be denied"
They said, "Someday you'll find
All who love are blind"
When your heart's on fire
You must realize
Smoke gets in your eyes
THE PLATTERS

CHRIS THE SON
Is out of the ordinary
That's right
Some things sure can sweep me off my feet
Burning down the house
No visible means of support
And you have not seen nothin' yet
Everything's stuck together
And I don't know what you expect
Staring into the TV set
Fightin' fire with fire
Talking Heads

ME
It is true as the author states that we build alienation around mental illness. We don't speak of such things. We learn it with a glance, disapproving look, whispers from others, or with silence. Silence is what keeps the engine going even as we watch a it derail. As children how are we to navigate our mother's or father's mental illness when they don't acknowledge it themselves? How as children are we to know what is true and what is not true? The burden is too heavy a load to carry. Yet people on the sidelines sit and quietly watch as it all burns down. Family, friend's coworkers, observers of our lives, they watch the children carry the heavy burden that doesn't belong to us but is given to us this burden until something tragic happens.