Driving with Dead People: A Memoir by Monica Holloway

You don’t have to read for long to see that the Holloways have some severe troubles. Monica might recognize her father's fixation with filming roadside accidents as bizarre but his problematic is the physical and emotional abuse that he heaves upon his family. Monica grows up in a family where everyone walks on eggshells in terror of being screamed at or humiliated in public. When her parents divorce, her father refuses to be involved in anything more than the divorce decree and custody agreement require of him and her mother goes back to school, leaving her two daughters at home alone where they learn to take care of themselves. The two girls manage to hide their parents abandonment from most of the town.. Monica, comes into her own as an adult and gathers her strength from inside. She helps her older sister through a suicidal time and realizes the harm her father did to them all. She later comes to terms with her father’s abuse even though she knows that it may break the relationship she had built with him

I thought this book brilliantly written and heartrending. How Monica is able to overcome her family’s dysfunction and sexual abuse is truly remarkable.

4 Stars