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. 

Non-Fiction that reads like fiction

I don't often read non-fiction and I'm not quite sure why. Probably because most of the non-fiction titles I see are usually biographies or autobiographies and for the most part, that just doesn't interest me. Which I find kind of interesting since history in general fascinates me. Despite my less than enthusiastic response to the genre, I have found several non-fiction books that I have enjoyed. So for those of you who aren't into fiction, these books should interest you.

The first two are by James Bradley and are both true accounts of the pacific theater in WWII:

Flags of our Fathers tells the story of the historic flag raising on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima. It not only tells us the history of the flag raising itself, but also delves into the back stories of the men who raised it. One of the men who was immortalized in the famous picture, was the author's father, John Bradley. It was only after his father's death that the author discovered the role he'd
played.

Flyboys is about the rise of the US Air Force, and the pivotal role they played in the battles of the pacific theater, specifically the battle of Chichi Jima. Many men were shot down that day; one was rescued by a submarine and went on to become President. Eight others were captured by Japanese troops and until this book came out, the story of what happened to them was never revealed.

Three Cups of Tea tells the story of one man whose failure led to his success. In 1993, Mortenson was trying to climb K2 when he became too ill to continue on. He spent seven weeks recuperating in the tiny Pakistani town of Korphe. In return for their generosity, he pledged to build the first school in the impoverished town. The story tells the tale of the author's struggles to fulfill on that promise and the eventual development of the Central Asia Institute whose mission is to fight Islamic extremism in the region through collaborative efforts to alleviate poverty and increase access to education, especially for girls.

Night by Elie Weisel is, as one reviewer put it, "the longest short book I've read." Weisel tells his own story of the concentration camps and the survivor's guilt that followed him. It's not a long book but the sparsity of it makes that much more of an impact. I just don't have the words to adequately describe this book so please, read and discover it for yourself.