Then There Was No Mountain: The Parallel Odyssey of a Mother and Daughter Through Addiction

Rating:
Summary: a gripping, moving, and ultimately very hopeful story
Review: Ellen Waterston gifts us with a gripping, deeply personal, and ultimately very hopeful story that reads like a good novel. You need not have endured the heartache of serious drug addiction and denial to appreciate this compelling story, although I work professionally with many addicted teens and their families and found the story true as well. It begins with Ellen's youngest daughter Sophie's submersion into drugs, dysphoria and dysfunction. As Sophie sinks deeper and deeper into her alienated world, Ellen (now a single mother after divorcing Sophie's drug abusing father) becomes more desperate and finally sends Sophie off to a residential drug rehabilitation program in rural Montana. There both of them find a guiding light in the woman founder and force behind the Northern Lights adolescent girls rehabilitation program. From here the story is about Ellen and how she struggles to see and then heal her own addictions to control, guilt, and victimization. When Sophie comes home after nearly a year in treatment and gets drunk with her older brother, Ellen implodes. "I am sick of doing it all, I wailed to myself: bread winner, boundary setter, unconditionally loving parent. I have been robbed by drugs, I whined, of my husband and my relationship with my children." Friends urge her beyond feelings of betrayal to a place where she can see that Sophie is now responsible for her own life. Beginning to genuinely let go, she rediscovers the real life we are all meant to lead-"in trust, in faith, in love, even when you can't see." Like real life, the story has a hopeful, but not final ending. The struggle that Ellen captures so eloquently is life-size and on-going. I savored this odyssey well after finishing the book. Hopefully, when Sophie grows into her own muse, she will treat us to her own story.

Rating:
Summary: Self-pity at its worst
Review: From the cover blurb, this book looked enlightening, and I had high hopes for it. I started the book with favorable expectations.

To my disappointment, all I found was a mother who couldn't take care of herself, much less her own children. One of the words she uses to describe her daughter Sophie is "magical" --- instead, it seems to me all of Ms. Waterston's children, especially Sophie, are indulged, spoiled and self-absorbed (repetitive, I know, but you get the picture).

Ms. Waterston's whininess doesn't help her kids, nor does any involvement with her former husband. Another aspect I found pathetic is how much Ms. Waterston dumps on the people in her life.

This scenario illustrates my point about Ms. Waterston's questionable frame of mind in assuming any responsibility for anyone, especially her children: What kind of a woman would leave her "beloved" shepherd dog in the care of her violent, substance-abusing ex-husband, only to return later to find the dog shot?

What a surprise that Ms. Waterston's children turned out to have so many problems, due to her imbecile of an ex-husband and her own obvious ineffectiveness as a role model.