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Everywhere the Undrowned: A Memoir of Survival and Imagination
This is what it is to survive. You find what floats and you hold on. Even if it is smaller than you.
Holding on is all fourteen-year-old Stephanie Clare Smith can do when she's left home alone in New Orleans during the summer of 1973. As she seeks to ease her solitude through her summer school algebra class, her wandering in the city, and her friendship with a streetcar operator, adults—particularly men—fail her again and again, with devastating consequences.
Dreamlike and beautifully paced, this lyrical debut memoir traces the events of one harrowing summer and its repercussions throughout Stephanie's life, including her work with families in crisis and as a caregiver for the mother who abandoned her all those years ago. Through a mosaic of trauma and transcendence, memory and metaphor, scarcity and neglect, Stephanie reveals how she built connections in and to a world that had largely left her behind. Her hard-won survival echoes that of countless other survivors whose stories are never told, and her strength stands as a testament to the power of creativity.
Holding on is all fourteen-year-old Stephanie Clare Smith can do when she's left home alone in New Orleans during the summer of 1973. As she seeks to ease her solitude through her summer school algebra class, her wandering in the city, and her friendship with a streetcar operator, adults—particularly men—fail her again and again, with devastating consequences.
Dreamlike and beautifully paced, this lyrical debut memoir traces the events of one harrowing summer and its repercussions throughout Stephanie's life, including her work with families in crisis and as a caregiver for the mother who abandoned her all those years ago. Through a mosaic of trauma and transcendence, memory and metaphor, scarcity and neglect, Stephanie reveals how she built connections in and to a world that had largely left her behind. Her hard-won survival echoes that of countless other survivors whose stories are never told, and her strength stands as a testament to the power of creativity.
- GenresMemoirNonfiction
159 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 19, 2024
22 people are currently reading
425 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
February 9, 2024
It was the summer of secrets and imaginary numbers. (loc. 368*)
1973: Smith's mother set off for the summer, leaving fourteen-year-old Smith alone in their home. In theory, Smith was supposed to use the time to thrive; in practice, she found herself fighting—sometimes literally—for survival.
Sorrow's tears look like an aerial photo after a tornado has blown out half the town. The high school is gone. All you can see are the foundations and angles where homes used to stand and well-traveled streets are now broken in half. But the tears full of laughter have swimming pools in back yards and parks full of swings—the town before the tornado arrived. (loc. 522)
The book takes on a somewhat dreamy structure, slipping easily from one moment into the next, tied together with imaginary numbers and difficult growth. It took me a moment to get into the writing, but once I was in, I was more or less captivated throughout. It's an emotionally complicated story, focusing on that 1973 summer and the way the summer's events reverberated but also taking Smith deep into adulthood, to (and through) the point at which she became her mother's caregiver for good. Smith explores what it means to be a caregiver, especially when the person for whom you are caring has in fact failed to care for you—again, complicated and without easy answers.
Beautifully written and with a depth disproportionate to the book's short length.
*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.
Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.
1973: Smith's mother set off for the summer, leaving fourteen-year-old Smith alone in their home. In theory, Smith was supposed to use the time to thrive; in practice, she found herself fighting—sometimes literally—for survival.
Sorrow's tears look like an aerial photo after a tornado has blown out half the town. The high school is gone. All you can see are the foundations and angles where homes used to stand and well-traveled streets are now broken in half. But the tears full of laughter have swimming pools in back yards and parks full of swings—the town before the tornado arrived. (loc. 522)
The book takes on a somewhat dreamy structure, slipping easily from one moment into the next, tied together with imaginary numbers and difficult growth. It took me a moment to get into the writing, but once I was in, I was more or less captivated throughout. It's an emotionally complicated story, focusing on that 1973 summer and the way the summer's events reverberated but also taking Smith deep into adulthood, to (and through) the point at which she became her mother's caregiver for good. Smith explores what it means to be a caregiver, especially when the person for whom you are caring has in fact failed to care for you—again, complicated and without easy answers.
Beautifully written and with a depth disproportionate to the book's short length.
*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.
Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.
Want to read
February 3, 2024I just read an excerpt in The Guardian, and the author’s way with words, recounting her traumatic experience and how it shaped her life, had me mesmerized.
June 23, 2024
I read Everywhere the Undrowned earlier in this year. I knew that I had to read it again. A review soon to follow. This is an absolutely exquisite book. The writing is incredible on so many levels.
Here is my review:
In the summer of 1973, a mother and her boyfriend pack up the silver Honda Z for an extended five-to-six week camping vacation out West. Stephanie, the woman’s 14-year-old daughter, is not included in the plans. Her mom intends to leave her alone at home. As a reminder, in 1973 there are no cell phones, no text messages, no videos, no photos, no Facebook or instagram. If camping—no contact. Stephanie is staring down five-to-six weeks of isolation during the humid New Orleans heat. There is no safety net. No family or friends to call on in an emergency. It’s tacitly understood that Stephanie, under no circumstances, is to reveal that she is without adult supervision. What could possibly go wrong. Plenty.
The stage is set for “Everywhere the Undrowned: A Memoir of Survival and Imagination” a debut memoir by Stephanie Clare Smith. As the end notes suggest, “This is what it is to survive. You find what floats and you hold on.”
Smith writes, “I remember asking my mother not to go on her trip. We stood in the living room on the green shag rug…I readied myself to just ask her to stay or else take me along with her.” Her mother rolls her eyes and says, “Teenagers love being on their own…you’ll see.” Still, Stephanie devises a way to symbolically tag along, “My mother didn’t know that I wrote my name and my favorite number eight in black Magic Marker on the bottom of her shoes before she took off. She couldn’t see my name on the black soles, but it was there, touching the ground with her, wherever she was.”
Initially it appears that a summer do-over algebra class at the high school might be a saving grace. Mr. Martin, a kind civics and history teacher, has been recruited to teach the do-over. Although the classroom offers no air-conditioning during the 100 percent humidity and 100 percent summer heat, Stephanie is glad to be in the company of other people. “Mr. Martin made a dot on the green board and labeled it A,” she writes, “Then he erased the dot and the A and told us it was still there.” She understands this concept. She is living it.
Stephanie as a teen is intelligent, resourceful, imaginative, observant, intuitive, and creative. Decades later, Smith as a writer brings all of these well honed-skills to her memoir. Her spare narrative lyrically flows through the most challenging summer of her life.
Boomers will immediately recognize the everyday touchstones from the 1960s and 1970s as Smith skillfully weaves music, current events, literature, television, and home decor into the storyline. We can feel the green shag carpet beneath our feet, recall the jowls of Watergate committee chairman Sam Ervin, and rekindle the magical connection first felt on hearing a young Joni Mitchell. In essence we see 1973 through Stephanie’s 14-year-old experience as well as in memories of our own… up to a point. Until things fall apart.
In her endless solitude Stephanie finds comfort in a book written by Charlotte Bronte. “My real talisman was Jane Eyre, the book I actually read and reread—an amulet of sorts. Jane was eighteen, out wandering the moors, and I was fourteen riding on streetcars.”
This is true. When she cannot sleep or bear to be alone she opts to ride the St. Charles Avenue streetcar. She makes a friend in Gifford, the streetcar driver. “He let me get on without a fare and I’d stand next to him. I’d ride his streetcar just to hear him ask me—“How was your day?” And “How are you doing?” As the friendship deepens he gives her his phone number. She can call him if she ever needs him. “I didn’t think I would use it, but I liked having his number inside my mind.” A red flag or a saving grace?
At home she watches Gunsmoke. She contemplates the life of Michael Collins, the astronaut left orbiting the moon—waiting for Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to return to the space capsule. She piles pots and pans against the front door just as Laura Petrie does on the Dick Van Dyke Show. A fail-safe, prat fall burglar alarm. She tries on her mother’s shoes.
On the fifth of July she decides to treat herself to a cheeseburger at the K&B on Saint Charles Avenue and Broadway. It’s about 10 p.m. Her destination in sight, she becomes aware of a green pickup truck circling. She “crossed the avenue once or twice to lose him the way I’d lost other men on other days.” No dice. She sees the reappearance of red hair as he stands near her on a dark sidewalk. He has a knife and threatens to kill her if she moves or screams.
What follows is a traumatic life altering assault. The physical details are scant - it’s the retelling of this 14-year-old’s emotional state that is so wrenching—her cool ability to assess the situation, her strength in following her intuition, her unbelievable initial concerns. For example, she worries where her assailant will drop her body. She is concerned that if the police can’t find her, her mother will simply think she’s run away. This is her unbearable thought. She assures her assailant that she won’t call the cops. “Why would I?” she thinks. “The way the policemen would want to reach my unreachable mother. The way we miss our only worlds if they’re taken away.”
What happens if you experience a deep physical and psychological trauma and you can’t tell anyone. What happens if you can’t call the police. What happens if you can’t go to a hospital as you have no adult and no insurance. What happens if you are only fourteen. There is no recourse. All you can do is protect your mother at all costs.
Stephanie Smith carries us through years of ongoing emotional healing and through a time spent caring for her aging mother. She sifts through and mulls over ongoing newspaper reports of young girls like Elizabeth Smart who are asked repeatedly why they didn’t run, why they didn’t fight back. She knows the answers. She thinks about Natascha Kampusch an “Austrian woman, kidnapped at ten years of age and held in a hell of a basement for eight long years.” Again the questions - why did you let this happen?
She builds a career at the North Carolina Department of Child Protective Services as a Family Mediator. One day her client is a 14-year-old girl who has already survived years of mother neglect. There will be no asinine questions from Stephanie Smith.
“Everywhere the Undrowned” is unique in its exploration of surviving isolation and trauma through a rich, imaginative mind. Stephanie Clare Smith’s deep insight will change you. It will create an awareness of the unspoken needs of others who walk, work, and live among us.
“You cannot always have protection,” Smith writes, “but you can always give protection.”
There is much more to this book. Please pick it up. You will not regret it.
Everywhere the Undrowned: A Memoir of Survival and Imagination
Stephanie Clare Smith
132 pages
Great Circle Books
The University of North Carolina Press
WWW.UNCPRESS.ORG
Starred review from the Kirkus Review
The top spot in “5 Must Read New Memoirs.”
Strong reviews from the Washington Post, The Guardian and more.
Here is my review:
In the summer of 1973, a mother and her boyfriend pack up the silver Honda Z for an extended five-to-six week camping vacation out West. Stephanie, the woman’s 14-year-old daughter, is not included in the plans. Her mom intends to leave her alone at home. As a reminder, in 1973 there are no cell phones, no text messages, no videos, no photos, no Facebook or instagram. If camping—no contact. Stephanie is staring down five-to-six weeks of isolation during the humid New Orleans heat. There is no safety net. No family or friends to call on in an emergency. It’s tacitly understood that Stephanie, under no circumstances, is to reveal that she is without adult supervision. What could possibly go wrong. Plenty.
The stage is set for “Everywhere the Undrowned: A Memoir of Survival and Imagination” a debut memoir by Stephanie Clare Smith. As the end notes suggest, “This is what it is to survive. You find what floats and you hold on.”
Smith writes, “I remember asking my mother not to go on her trip. We stood in the living room on the green shag rug…I readied myself to just ask her to stay or else take me along with her.” Her mother rolls her eyes and says, “Teenagers love being on their own…you’ll see.” Still, Stephanie devises a way to symbolically tag along, “My mother didn’t know that I wrote my name and my favorite number eight in black Magic Marker on the bottom of her shoes before she took off. She couldn’t see my name on the black soles, but it was there, touching the ground with her, wherever she was.”
Initially it appears that a summer do-over algebra class at the high school might be a saving grace. Mr. Martin, a kind civics and history teacher, has been recruited to teach the do-over. Although the classroom offers no air-conditioning during the 100 percent humidity and 100 percent summer heat, Stephanie is glad to be in the company of other people. “Mr. Martin made a dot on the green board and labeled it A,” she writes, “Then he erased the dot and the A and told us it was still there.” She understands this concept. She is living it.
Stephanie as a teen is intelligent, resourceful, imaginative, observant, intuitive, and creative. Decades later, Smith as a writer brings all of these well honed-skills to her memoir. Her spare narrative lyrically flows through the most challenging summer of her life.
Boomers will immediately recognize the everyday touchstones from the 1960s and 1970s as Smith skillfully weaves music, current events, literature, television, and home decor into the storyline. We can feel the green shag carpet beneath our feet, recall the jowls of Watergate committee chairman Sam Ervin, and rekindle the magical connection first felt on hearing a young Joni Mitchell. In essence we see 1973 through Stephanie’s 14-year-old experience as well as in memories of our own… up to a point. Until things fall apart.
In her endless solitude Stephanie finds comfort in a book written by Charlotte Bronte. “My real talisman was Jane Eyre, the book I actually read and reread—an amulet of sorts. Jane was eighteen, out wandering the moors, and I was fourteen riding on streetcars.”
This is true. When she cannot sleep or bear to be alone she opts to ride the St. Charles Avenue streetcar. She makes a friend in Gifford, the streetcar driver. “He let me get on without a fare and I’d stand next to him. I’d ride his streetcar just to hear him ask me—“How was your day?” And “How are you doing?” As the friendship deepens he gives her his phone number. She can call him if she ever needs him. “I didn’t think I would use it, but I liked having his number inside my mind.” A red flag or a saving grace?
At home she watches Gunsmoke. She contemplates the life of Michael Collins, the astronaut left orbiting the moon—waiting for Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to return to the space capsule. She piles pots and pans against the front door just as Laura Petrie does on the Dick Van Dyke Show. A fail-safe, prat fall burglar alarm. She tries on her mother’s shoes.
On the fifth of July she decides to treat herself to a cheeseburger at the K&B on Saint Charles Avenue and Broadway. It’s about 10 p.m. Her destination in sight, she becomes aware of a green pickup truck circling. She “crossed the avenue once or twice to lose him the way I’d lost other men on other days.” No dice. She sees the reappearance of red hair as he stands near her on a dark sidewalk. He has a knife and threatens to kill her if she moves or screams.
What follows is a traumatic life altering assault. The physical details are scant - it’s the retelling of this 14-year-old’s emotional state that is so wrenching—her cool ability to assess the situation, her strength in following her intuition, her unbelievable initial concerns. For example, she worries where her assailant will drop her body. She is concerned that if the police can’t find her, her mother will simply think she’s run away. This is her unbearable thought. She assures her assailant that she won’t call the cops. “Why would I?” she thinks. “The way the policemen would want to reach my unreachable mother. The way we miss our only worlds if they’re taken away.”
What happens if you experience a deep physical and psychological trauma and you can’t tell anyone. What happens if you can’t call the police. What happens if you can’t go to a hospital as you have no adult and no insurance. What happens if you are only fourteen. There is no recourse. All you can do is protect your mother at all costs.
Stephanie Smith carries us through years of ongoing emotional healing and through a time spent caring for her aging mother. She sifts through and mulls over ongoing newspaper reports of young girls like Elizabeth Smart who are asked repeatedly why they didn’t run, why they didn’t fight back. She knows the answers. She thinks about Natascha Kampusch an “Austrian woman, kidnapped at ten years of age and held in a hell of a basement for eight long years.” Again the questions - why did you let this happen?
She builds a career at the North Carolina Department of Child Protective Services as a Family Mediator. One day her client is a 14-year-old girl who has already survived years of mother neglect. There will be no asinine questions from Stephanie Smith.
“Everywhere the Undrowned” is unique in its exploration of surviving isolation and trauma through a rich, imaginative mind. Stephanie Clare Smith’s deep insight will change you. It will create an awareness of the unspoken needs of others who walk, work, and live among us.
“You cannot always have protection,” Smith writes, “but you can always give protection.”
There is much more to this book. Please pick it up. You will not regret it.
Everywhere the Undrowned: A Memoir of Survival and Imagination
Stephanie Clare Smith
132 pages
Great Circle Books
The University of North Carolina Press
WWW.UNCPRESS.ORG
Starred review from the Kirkus Review
The top spot in “5 Must Read New Memoirs.”
Strong reviews from the Washington Post, The Guardian and more.
February 8, 2024
In truth, I finished this days ago and it’s been rattling around inside of me. This memoir which deals with the aftermath of trauma (abandonment, sexual assault, childhood neglect) is a haunting, frank, and atmospheric book. Set in New Orleans, the book felt palpably familiar to me. I could feel the humidity and the broken sidewalks of Uptown New Orleans. That said, her childhood could not have been more different than mine.
This is a book about finding ways to live through loneliness and fear. It’s also a book about forgiveness and unconditional love. When Smith’s mother leaves her alone with only an envelope of money for food over the summer in the mid-1970s, you wonder how anyone could abdicate their responsibility as a parent. Smith doesn’t try to judge or analyze her mother, but she lays bare the ways that her mother’s choices damaged her life by keeping us close as she walks the reader through those long, heavy days and weeks alone. I’m haunted by the sensation of riding a St Charles Avenue streetcar on a loop just to be outside her apartment and in the world, safe for a small amount of time in motion on the tracks.
This is a deeply evocative book that consciously channels the structure of Maggie Nelson’s Bluets. I wanted to know more about her teenage years—how she survived her childhood and managed to leave New Orleans for college. It’s a slim book that one may read in one setting and is the first in what I believe will be a series of memoirs from UNC press.
This is a book about finding ways to live through loneliness and fear. It’s also a book about forgiveness and unconditional love. When Smith’s mother leaves her alone with only an envelope of money for food over the summer in the mid-1970s, you wonder how anyone could abdicate their responsibility as a parent. Smith doesn’t try to judge or analyze her mother, but she lays bare the ways that her mother’s choices damaged her life by keeping us close as she walks the reader through those long, heavy days and weeks alone. I’m haunted by the sensation of riding a St Charles Avenue streetcar on a loop just to be outside her apartment and in the world, safe for a small amount of time in motion on the tracks.
This is a deeply evocative book that consciously channels the structure of Maggie Nelson’s Bluets. I wanted to know more about her teenage years—how she survived her childhood and managed to leave New Orleans for college. It’s a slim book that one may read in one setting and is the first in what I believe will be a series of memoirs from UNC press.
November 28, 2023
"Everywhere the Undrowned" by Stephanie Clare Smith is a mesmerizing exploration of a world both hauntingly familiar and exquisitely strange. Smith's prose weaves a tapestry of lyrical beauty and dark mystery, immersing readers in a vivid dreamscape that blurs the lines between reality and fantasy.
The novel follows the journey of its enigmatic protagonist through a landscape of submerged memories and forgotten truths. Smith's keen sense of atmosphere creates an eerie yet enchanting backdrop for a narrative that unfolds like a haunting melody. Themes of loss, identity, and the resilience of the human spirit resonate throughout the pages, leaving readers both contemplative and emotionally stirred.
Smith's ability to craft multidimensional characters adds depth to the narrative, making it easy for readers to empathize with the struggles and triumphs of the protagonist. The novel's pacing is expertly calibrated, maintaining a delicate balance between introspection and action.
"Everywhere the Undrowned" is a poetic and thought-provoking journey that lingers in the mind long after the final page. Stephanie Clare Smith has crafted a compelling work of speculative fiction that transcends genres, offering a unique and unforgettable reading experience.
The novel follows the journey of its enigmatic protagonist through a landscape of submerged memories and forgotten truths. Smith's keen sense of atmosphere creates an eerie yet enchanting backdrop for a narrative that unfolds like a haunting melody. Themes of loss, identity, and the resilience of the human spirit resonate throughout the pages, leaving readers both contemplative and emotionally stirred.
Smith's ability to craft multidimensional characters adds depth to the narrative, making it easy for readers to empathize with the struggles and triumphs of the protagonist. The novel's pacing is expertly calibrated, maintaining a delicate balance between introspection and action.
"Everywhere the Undrowned" is a poetic and thought-provoking journey that lingers in the mind long after the final page. Stephanie Clare Smith has crafted a compelling work of speculative fiction that transcends genres, offering a unique and unforgettable reading experience.
April 5, 2024
I thought this book was a wonderful, heart-wrenching read. I don't think I have ever been so affected by words on paper. I saw that someone had compared it to Sylvia Plath, but to me it felt like James Joyce, a combination of the observations of everyday life like in Ulysses, but in minuscule detail, with the detached lyrical wordplay of Finnegans Wake. I was particularly affected by the descriptions of how Stephanie felt when she was left at home alone while her mother went off out west with her boyfriend for a vacation. I'm so glad nothing like that ever happened to me. I loved the interplay with algebra and the meanings of zero and imaginary numbers. Congratulations on the creative use of language to convey emotion and the bravery in telling it like it was.
April 26, 2024
this memoir will stay with me forever. incredible writing.
February 11, 2024
I would rate this book 3 1/2 stars out of 5.
This is a short read told by the author about her time growing up in New Orleans starting around the age of fourteen with a mother you could say at best was flighty and making the author the ultimate latchkey kid to the extreme. At the start of this book, it felt like it was all over the place like each paragraph thrown together but the story settles down as describes her day-to-day struggles and wondering whether her mother is coming back. The story takes a dark twist when she talks about being raped and the attempts to cope with this. The story starts to move forward into her adulthood and her work as a counselor and moves back and forth. There are parts that are educational such as what happened in China when they tried to eradicate the sparrow and what the ramifications when they almost succeeded and other part that were educational but also tragic when it concerns statistics on women and girls who have been violated. It was definitely sad when she talks about a cartoon clip and how it relates to one of her clients. I was surprised how the story comes full circle.
This is a short read told by the author about her time growing up in New Orleans starting around the age of fourteen with a mother you could say at best was flighty and making the author the ultimate latchkey kid to the extreme. At the start of this book, it felt like it was all over the place like each paragraph thrown together but the story settles down as describes her day-to-day struggles and wondering whether her mother is coming back. The story takes a dark twist when she talks about being raped and the attempts to cope with this. The story starts to move forward into her adulthood and her work as a counselor and moves back and forth. There are parts that are educational such as what happened in China when they tried to eradicate the sparrow and what the ramifications when they almost succeeded and other part that were educational but also tragic when it concerns statistics on women and girls who have been violated. It was definitely sad when she talks about a cartoon clip and how it relates to one of her clients. I was surprised how the story comes full circle.
February 17, 2024
From the first paragraph of this beautiful book you may recognize that the writing resonates with a tenderness not often encountered in traditional memoirs. Everywhere The Undrowned is sweeter and more subtle and more dream-like than any book I've encountered for a long, long time. With heartbreaking poeticism the story unfolds like a shoebox of frayed polaroids, picked up randomly and absorbed one by one; each image capable of stopping the reader in their tracks, stunned by Smith's overlapping of beauty and tragedy. I read Undrowned slowly, over several days, so as to best appreciate its power. If you enjoy the experience of being transported into the heart by writing so profoundly gentle and human that it brings tears to your eyes, then I highly recommend this book.
March 3, 2024
If I could give this book more than 5 stars, I would. I read part of it in the Guardian , I think? I got the book as soon as I could and read it all through.
It is an amazing story, told with such authenticity sensitivity and honesty. Books like this are a big part of the reason…why I read books.
It’s about the author being both neglected and raped. As a rape survivor, it really helped. It can be so hard to want to get up in the morning, literally for the rest of my life. I feel like this person gets it.
I was worried reading the book, that it would be triggering, but it wasn’t. Can’t say that for everyone that reads it, but that was the case for me. I also coukd not put it down.
I hope this author continues to write. I look forward to her future work.
It is an amazing story, told with such authenticity sensitivity and honesty. Books like this are a big part of the reason…why I read books.
It’s about the author being both neglected and raped. As a rape survivor, it really helped. It can be so hard to want to get up in the morning, literally for the rest of my life. I feel like this person gets it.
I was worried reading the book, that it would be triggering, but it wasn’t. Can’t say that for everyone that reads it, but that was the case for me. I also coukd not put it down.
I hope this author continues to write. I look forward to her future work.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 3, 2024
4.8/5 but on here i’ll give it a 5 because wow this was written so beautifully. being completely honest i had no idea what to really expect when going into this book because the back of it is really ambiguous. the thing that really caught my eye and attention at the library was the writing on the first page. it was beautiful but though provoking just by the first page, and the rest of the book followed suite. i loved this book so much and i think everyone should read a book like this once in their life (if they are stable and comfortable reading about harsh topics like SA & r-pe). i felt a lot of emotions reading this and it was beautiful. i loved it. very eye opening as well.
May 25, 2025
Poetic, heartbreaking memoir. Stephanie recounts the summer of 1974, when she was 14 and alone in her apartment in New Orleans for over a month while her mom vacationed with a boyfriend. Stephanie developed a friendship with an adult man who drove a streetcar- and yes, what happens is exactly what you're afraid happens, but something even worse happens that summer when She's in summer school, and her (male) algebra teacher barely reacts when she tries to tell him what happened. Adults fail her in so many ways. It's short and sad and haunting.
February 14, 2024
Went to Steph’s reading in Raleigh last night, immediately bought this book, and read it cover to cover in one sitting. To say this is just a memoir is not doing it the justice it deserves. Steph writes in poetic vignettes, illustriously tying her own survivor story to water and the color green and growing up in the south. She keeps the reader afloat and grabs their hand pulling them through her 14 year old perspective through poignant and gut-wrenching descriptions, captivating and compelling the reader to be curious and empathic of the world and those who walk through it. 11/10.
February 19, 2024
I am primarily a memoir reader, and this one is brilliant. It is a slender book but not a quick read since it is so beautifully and imaginatively written. The author takes the threads of a neglectful childhood along with the later difficulties as a caretaker of her neurocognitive disordered mother and weaves these experiences into a beautiful tapestry of a memoir. It is both heart breaking and uplifting, at the same time.
Get ahold of this book; find a comfortable chair; put your feet up and go on the journey with Ms. Smith. It reminds you of why you love to read.
Get ahold of this book; find a comfortable chair; put your feet up and go on the journey with Ms. Smith. It reminds you of why you love to read.
January 30, 2024
This is such a beautiful book. It's about what it means to survive and keep on loving this crazy world we live in, even through and after the bleakest times. And it's so beautifully, poetically told. The kind of book where you find yourself wanting to underline things on every page so you can go back to it and feel the feelings again and again. I recommend it to anyone who's a survivor, who's spiritual, who feels alone or in need of solidarity, or who likes beautiful writing!
September 3, 2024
This is a harrowing book. Written in prose that read like poetry and in small bites, this is a memoir of a kidnapping and rape and a story of a mother’s unbelievable neglect and a daughter’s unbelievable forgiveness. I loved the first half of the book, but we skip from the authors teenage years straight to her 30’s then 60’s and there was too much unexplained about how she got to those places. The fragmented writing worked much better in the first half and grew tiresome toward the end.
May 16, 2025
This book was incredibly impactful and definitely my favorite book that I have read this year. I cannot believe it is not more popular. Stephanie Clare Smith, thank you. I do not think I have ever felt so connected to a piece of literature before, "Am I kin to her?", these words that Stephanie uses throughout various parts of the book were so resonant when thinking about everyone's individual life experiences and the interconnectedness of all beings.
July 8, 2024
Never had I read a memoir more than once. I've now savored Everywhere the Undrowned three times, discovering deeper nuance with each pass. The author's teenage journey was harrowing, and her creative resilience stunning. A meticulously crafted memoir that reveals Stephanie Smith's poetic gifts, her bravery, and her compassion.
April 5, 2024
This will be in my head for a long time.
The horror she writes about, the way she writes, the way she persists in duty in ways I could not. This book has left me agape at humanity, inhumanity, prose. It is simply magnificent.
The horror she writes about, the way she writes, the way she persists in duty in ways I could not. This book has left me agape at humanity, inhumanity, prose. It is simply magnificent.
May 21, 2024
TOO BRIEF!!!
Truth needs no elaboration and Stephanie Clare Smith proves that. It's wonderful that she recognized that she needs therapeutic measures. Aside from a bad romance with Gifford, there's no mention of Eros in her life. Her life is so bare. No extreme joys. She just wallows in the grey.
Truth needs no elaboration and Stephanie Clare Smith proves that. It's wonderful that she recognized that she needs therapeutic measures. Aside from a bad romance with Gifford, there's no mention of Eros in her life. Her life is so bare. No extreme joys. She just wallows in the grey.
June 19, 2024
This is a beautifully written memoir. The author's use of words (introducing words, the bigger meanings of words) is powerful. Survival, healing, recovery from abandonment, processing your own story....this memoir gives insight into all of this and more.
July 9, 2024
Heart-wrenching memoir of a 14 year old girl left alone in New Orleans for the summer. It is about abandonment, neglect, and sexual assault. But it is also about survival and forgiveness. It reads like poetry and is beautifully written.
April 13, 2024
A sad story beautifully told.
April 28, 2024
Powerful, beautifully written, heart wrenching and inspiring. We see you and yes, you are that kind of strong!
May 21, 2024
A powerful memoir, both in terms of content and in the way Stephanie Smith has crafted her story!
August 14, 2024
Very intense oof,
I did cry, so many things i will remember.
I did cry, so many things i will remember.
November 22, 2024
Haunting, well-woven, a truly worthwhile read.
January 19, 2025
This is an exquisite book.
February 19, 2025
A memoir written like poetry, like one long beautiful lyric essay. Absolutely gorgeous! Somehow, Smith transforms her childhood trauma into art.
September 7, 2024
My God, this was one of the most amazing memoirs I’ve ever read. I met Steph Smith at a writing workshop we both attended, and make no mistake, it was a *great* workshop, but learning about and reading this book was one of the highlights for me. It’s masterfully written, the child who can never quite find home standing beside the adult who carves a careful, helpful path through the world. I keep picking it up to re-read gorgeous passages. Bravo.
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