The Sky Isnt Visible from Here

Description

Felicia Sullivan survived the childhood from hell with a violent and abusive addict mother, only to face her own deadly battle - with herself. Swaggering down mean streets, Rosie was once beautiful, impetuous and wild, afraid of no one. Cocaine turned her into a monster her child could not recognise. As a little girl, Felicia Sullivan was forced to become her mother's keeper, rushing her to hospital when she overdosed, withstanding her terrifying rages and abusive boyfriends, and wondering why she wouldn't tell the truth about her real father. In The Sky Isn't Visible From Here, Sullivan looks back on her life among drug dealers and substitute 'fathers', the highs and terrifying lows of her mother's cocaine addiction, and her battle to escape the same fate. Ashamed of her past, she invented a fake new identity to show the world. Yet despite putting herself through an Ivy League university and forging an outwardly successful high-powered career, like her mother she eventually succumbed to the same terrifying alcohol and drug abuse. Sullivan wrote this breathtakingly honest and moving memoir when she realised that it was time to kill her own creation, and save her life.

Felicia C. Sullivan is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a Best American Essays notable and recipient of the 2005 Tin House memoir fellowship. In 2001 she founded the critically acclaimed literary journal Small Spiral Notebook. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.