Overview
"I'm not telling you where I am. Don't try to find me."
Remember Go Ask Alice? Augusta, Gone is the memoir Alice's mother never wrote. A single parent, Martha Tod Dudman is sure she is giving her two children the perfect life, sheltering them from the wild tumult of her own youth. But when Augusta turns fifteen, things start to happen: first the cigarette, then the blue pipe and the little bag Augusta says is aspirin. Just talking to her is like sticking your hand in the garbage disposal. Martha doesn't know if she's confronting adolescent behavior, craziness, her own failures as a parent — or all three.
Augusta, Gone is the story of a girl who is doing everything to hurt herself and a mother who would try anything to save her. It is a sorrowful tale, but not a tragic one. Though the book charts a harrowing course through the troubled waters of adolescence, hope — that mother and daughter will be reunited and will learn to love one another again — steers them toward a shore of forgiveness and redemption.
Written with darkly seductive grace, Augusta, Gone conjures the dangerous thrill of being drawn into the heart of a whirling vortex. This daring book will be admired for its lyricism, applauded for its courage, and remembered for its power. It demands to be read from start to finish, in one breathless sitting.
Synopsis
"I'm not telling you where I am. Don't try to find me."
Remember Go Ask Alice? Augusta, Gone is the memoir Alice's mother never wrote. A single parent, Martha Tod Dudman is sure she is giving her two children the perfect life, sheltering them from the wild tumult of her own youth. But when Augusta turns fifteen, things start to happen: first the cigarette, then the blue pipe and the little bag Augusta says is aspirin. Just talking to her is like sticking your hand in the garbage disposal. Martha doesn't know if she's confronting adolescent behavior, craziness, her own failures as a parent — or all three.
Augusta, Gone is the story of a girl who is doing everything to hurt herself and a mother who would try anything to save her. It is a sorrowful tale, but not a tragic one. Though the book charts a harrowing course through the troubled waters of adolescence, hope — that mother and daughter will be reunited and will learn to love one another again — steers them toward a shore of forgiveness and redemption.
Written with darkly seductive grace, Augusta, Gone conjures the dangerous thrill of being drawn into the heart of a whirling vortex. This daring book will be admired for its lyricism, applauded for its courage, and remembered for its power. It demands to be read from start to finish, in one breathless sitting.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
How does a parent deal with a rebellious adolescent? Is it better to clamp down or loosen up, set more ground rules or allow more flexibility? Those are the questions that faced Martha Tod Dudman, a single mother whose daughter, Augusta, became increasingly incommunicative and began to show signs of drug abuse around age 15. The more Dudman tried to reach out to her daughter, the more Augusta shrank back. Dudman now relates her distressing story in Augusta, Gone, a dark but hopeful memoir for parents and children to read, discuss, and learn from togetherMartha Beck
The frankness of Augusta, Gone will help other parents in similar circumstances, if only by facilitating open discussion of problems they may be ashamed to admit. At one point, Dudman describes how she scoured ''parenting'' books for answers: ''They only talked about little problems. When your child begins to show different patterns -- changes in eating patterns, changes in sleeping patterns, depression, mood swings, schoolwork slipping -- choose one. . . . How about when the whole child collapses? How about when everything is wrong all the time and she is screaming at you and threatening you with a knife and you are crying and she is crying and it feels like the end of your life? Where's the book for that?''This is the book for that.
— New York Times Book Review
Janet Maslin
Ms. Dudman delivers a wrenching mother's-eye view of the kind of family crisis seen in Traffic, in MSNBC's recent tough documentary on heroin addiction and in countless households where teenagers find chemical means of amplifying the rebelliousness they already feel.— New York Times
From The Critics
Dudman, a divorced mother living in Maine, tried to give her two beloved children, Augusta and Jack, the perfect childhood. Like many mothers, she worried that she was working too much, that her kids were on their own too often. At the age of eleven, the formerly trustworthy Augusta started to change. Increasingly angry, she began staying in her room for long periods of time. Dudman's memoir recounts the author's struggles with her increasingly despondent daughter. Eventually Augusta began smoking pot and her rebellious behavior escalated to lying, stealing and skipping school. Dudman's life started falling apart; Not knowing what else to do, she sent Augusta to a wilderness camp and later a school for troubled kids. Dudman's fluid, simple prose makes this memoir, with its difficult subject matter, an easy, compelling read. While the reader wonders how Augusta would respond to her mother's book, there's no way of knowing her side of the story—not until Augusta decides to write her own book. Thanks to her mother's "tough love," this former wild child is in a position to do so.—Ann Collette