Searching for Mercy Street

My Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton

New York Times Notable Book: A “beautifully written” memoir by the daughter of the brilliant, troubled poet (Detroit Free Press).

This is an honest, unsparing account of the anguish and fierce love that bound a difficult mother and the daughter she left behind. Linda Sexton was twenty-one when her mother killed herself, and now she looks back, remembers, and tries to come to terms with her mother’s life.

Growing up with Anne Sexton was a wild mixture of suicidal depression and manic happiness, inappropriate behavior and midnight trips to the psychiatric ward. Anne taught Linda how to write, how to see, how to imagine—and only Linda could have written a book that captures so vividly the intimate details and lingering emotions of their life together. Searching for Mercy Street speaks to everyone who admires Anne Sexton and to every daughter or son who knows the pain of an imperfect childhood.

“Sexton forcefully communicates the fear, repulsion, neediness, and sorrow that filled her childhood, as well as the agony of her own mental breakdown and her terror of becoming like her mother, in lucid and vivid prose.” —The Boston Globe

“A candid, often painful depiction of a daughter’s struggles to come to terms with her powerful and emotionally troubled mother.” —The New York Times