Come Back: A Mother and Daughter’s Journey Through Hell and Back by Claire and Mia Fontaine

Claire Fontaine has great life; a successful career as a screenwriter, a wonderfully supportive husband, Paul, and a bright happy 15 year old, Mia. Until the day Mia ran away with a Wiccan friend, leaving a note telling her parents not to worry, “I have a Swiss army knife and mace.” Mia is quickly found but has spiraled quickly downward, becoming addicted to drugs and self mutilation. Sent to live with Claire’s sister in Indiana, her spiral continues and her drug use intensifies. Finally, her parents make the decision to send her to Morava Academy in the Czech Republic, a quasi-military institution where the teens aren’t allowed to speak and are strictly monitored. There, Mia finally begins to come to terms with the abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of her biological father. Back home, Claire and Paul undergo their own transformation, participating in their own form of group therapy to learn how to deal with Mia when she gets out. This story is told in alternating narratives from both Claire and Mia’s perspectives and is both uplifting and depressing. You feel for both Mia and Claire and understand how a parent can be driven to do this to their own child; yet when you see the outcome, you can’t help but realize it was for the best. I believe I read somewhere that the two were forced to write under a pseudonym for privacy reasons – the biological father is a New England blueblood – but you can feel how real this story is. I literally couldn’t put it down. For more info, click here.