“An unsparing account of the anguish and fierce love between Linda Gray Sexton and her brilliant, unstable and ultimately self-destructive mother, Anne Sexton. 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 lives 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.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“Powerful and affecting…a candid, often painful, depiction of a daughter’s struggles to come to terms with her powerful and emotionally troubled mother. Sexton writes with compelling urgency and candor and has not tried to gloss over the difficulties of their relationship or resolve the ambivalence of her own emotions. Rather, she has set all these conflicts down on paper, leaving us with a disturbing portrait of a mercurial, Impossible, and magnetic woman.”
MICHIKO KAKUTANI, NEW YORK TIMES

“This memoir has an urgency about it and it is to Sexton’s credit as an honest and largely unself-serving narrator that throughout she has chosen to forgo the primitive gratification of scrawling over the picture of her childish mother-worship with fat black crayon; instead she continues to add strokes of color and lightness to an ever-darkening portrait. By the books end she has made her way valiantly back to her mother, passing through the portals of rage and despair before she glimpses the possibility of separating out Anne Sexton’s perverse influence from her legacy of delight in words and experience… Searching for Mercy Street is suffused with a complicated kind of love.”
DAPHNE MERKIN, THE NEW YORKER

“One of the most illuminating things here is that careful, industrious Linda—who, as she grows older, bravely fights off her own depressions, headaches, even suicidal thoughts, idolizing ‘normalcy,’ health, and domestic responsibility—seems a far better writer than her mom.”
CAROLYN SEE, WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD

“Linda Sexton has broken the code of silence which often surrounds the American home. In her powerful and graceful prose, honed in four novels of her own, she has quietly and lovingly told the story of her mother and the family she loved both too much and too little. Any mother or daughter, any child of an alcoholic parent, anyone who has lived with the all-consuming obsession of a writer with their work, will recognize themselves in this ravishing portrait.”
SUSAN CHEEVER, AUTHOR OF HOME AFTER DARK

“Conveyed with extraordinary power, Linda’s brave story…ends on a note of peace, telling the hard-won truth.”
ATLANTA JOURNAL & CONSTITUTION

“Sexton’s memoir is an extraordinary exploration…Searching for Mercy Street is utterly sincere, hungry for truth, and beautifully written.”
DETROIT FREE PRESS

“As brave and honest and forceful a reminiscence as a reader is likely to find. Searching for Mercy Street, Sexton’s seventh book, will be the book that seals her literary reputation even as it lays her mother’s mysterious persona to rest.”
LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER

“She’s still her mother’s daughter, both in the intense grace of her prose and her headlong commitment to the truth.”
MIRABELLA

“I have been reading these memoirs late at night, moved by Linda Sexton’s ferocity of purpose and her willingness to face the dark—and yet forgive.”
PAUL MONETTE, AUTHOR OF BECOMING A MAN

“Searching for Mercy Street is a brave and beautiful memoir. Anne Sexton’s poetry, letters, and biography gave us windows into her life, but Linda Gray Sexton’s words bring her inside the chambers of their two hearts.”
ELINOR LIPMAN, AUTHOR OF THEN SHE FOUND ME AND THE WAY MEN ACT

“Sexton traces the darkness in her own life to early, heartbreaking trauma. Her prose reels you in.”
ELLE

“In deceptively fluid prose, Linda explores her complex relationship to her mother and strips raw the nerves of a troubled family.”
KIRKUS REVIEWS, STARRED REVIEW

“This memoir, beautifully written and searingly frank, explores the mysteries and consequences of madness, creativity, love, and the courageous act of telling painful truths.”
BOOKLIST

“A courageous journey into the dark terrain of remembering, forgiving and healing through telling—a trait that is her birthright.”
PEOPLE

“One never doubts that Linda Gray Sexton has told us the truth… Her writing is at its best: lean, quick, tightly conceived…The book almost reeks of authenticity.”
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“In this deft, beautiful memoir, Sexton covers difficult family territory with unique grace.”
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

“Sexton has written about intense personal conflicts, evoked strong emotion, and stayed true to it. The saga of this daughter and her mother is inherently fascinating.”
CHICAGO TRIBUNE

“Without glossing over the damage her mother did, Sexton finds it in her heart not just to forgive Anne, but to acknowledge that her legacy includes creativity and joy as well as pain.”
CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER

“Linda Gray Sexton’s exploration is so smart, so well-written, moving, and generous that it transcends the typecasting that could easily have become a trap…. Written with grace, precision and, most important, love.”
LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“Heroic.”
NEW YORK NEWSDAY

“The suspense and insight, the emotional insight and poetry, of a first-rate novel.”
NEW WOMAN

“This cathartic and anguish-filled book spares no details of the mother’s selfish and difficult personality or her intense and fortifying love.”
LIBRARY JOURNAL

“Linda’s often graceful struggle to come to terms with the way her mother treated her and her own moments—as a mother, writer, a sometime problem drinker occasionally acquainted with depression—of discovering a real kinship with her mother’s shadow side, are darkly fascinating.”
THE IMPROPER BOSTONIAN

“Linda Sexton’s memoir is a tour de force, shot through with passion, candor, and the urgency of a grown daughter forced to come to terms with her famous mother’s legacy. Anne Sexton would have applauded her daughter’s honesty, insight, and the sheer power of her prose.”
ELIZABETH BENEDICT, AUTHOR OF THE PRACTICE OF DECEIT

For many reviews by readers go to: http://www.amazon.com/Searching-Mercy-Street-Journey-Mother/product-reviews/0316782076