A story of power, family, and struggle, [The Witch’s Daughter] is a captivating look at growing up in the shadow of a dominant, unstable parent.... With rich imagery, thoughtful reflections, and compelling prose, Fink’s memoir will resonate with readers of Tara Westover's Educated.”
—Booklist
“Riveting...Equal parts cutting and compassionate, this tale of hard-won peace will resonate with readers wrestling with their own complicated families.”
—Publishers Weekly
“[A]n emotional memoir of [Fink’s] long struggle to wrest herself from her manipulative, destructive mother....A memorable book of raw, unvarnished recollections.”
—Kirkus
“When you finish this book, you will turn around and give it to someone who needs it. This is a master text on surviving trauma as a child and an adult. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Phoebe Bridgers
“Orenda Fink's captivating memoir cascades with life and loss. Part detailed description of a gnarled family tree, part rock n' roll tell-all, part exorcism of the many demons that her and us can recognize in ourselves but do not understand. I have been a longtime admirer of her art and have been fortunate enough to call her a friend for many years. Still I had not known much of what is contained in this book. We have all touched some kind of madness. We have all cast our own sorry, desperate type of spells. This book is a testament to those things which make us scared and brave and magically human all at once.”
—Conor Oberst
“’The past is never dead and not even past,’ the great Southern novelist William Faulkner wrote. In her evocative, elegant memoir, the great Southern songwriter and performer Orenda Fink is like a descendant of one of his characters transported to our time, surviving terrible circumstances and finally thriving.”
—Anne Kreamer, author of Going Gray
“Orenda Fink’s memoir is un-put-downable—it is a lyrical, compassionate, and complicated telling of the impacts of mental health and antagonism on multiple generations of a family. She brings a realistic and compelling lens to the confusing terrain of guilt, duty, grief, attachment, shame, and love that family members must navigate in these circumstances. It will validate the experience of so many survivors of these family systems.”
—Dr. Ramani Durvasula, New York Times Bestselling Author of It’s Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People, clinical psychologist, and professor emerita of psychology, California State University, Los Angeles
“A memoir of great generosity—to herself, to her mother, to all mothers, to her friends and fans, to everyone who reads it. You don’t have to know Orenda or her music in order to recognize a version of your own life inside of her own. Plus all the juicy music-scene gossip. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Alexander Payne
“Every paragraph of The Witch’s Daughter shimmers with a hauntingly precise perspective, and the spirit of the book is a delight, a wonder, even as it addresses turmoil, sadness, heartbreak. This is a riveting book about defiance. As Orenda seeks explanation for her mother's twisted magic and vindictive spells, she finds wisdom and serenity and music. The minute I finished the book, I wanted to start right over at the beginning.”
—Timothy Schaffert, author of The Perfume Thief, The Titanic Survivors Book Club
“Orenda Fink’s band Azure Ray may have been deemed ‘whispercore,’ but The Witch’s Daughter builds to a howling, feral scream. Tracing her hand-to-mouth itinerant childhood through years of enduring a narcissistic abuser, Fink renders the surreal horror of life with her mother so potently, the reader yearns for each escape: She enters a collapsing world of major labels, becomes an indie star, and finds solitude in the desert. Her odyssey is intertwined with famous cameos, mounting tragedy, unraveling familial lies, and urgent questions: Is the difference between the spiritual and the scientific primarily semantic? And how can we unweave our abusers’ threads from the fabric of ourselves?”
—Chris Harding Thornton, author of Pickard County Atlas
Acclaimed indie musician and songwriter Orenda Fink's lyrical and moving memoir about growing up with a mother who battled mental illness and addiction is a “master text on surviving trauma as a child and adult” (Phoebe Bridgers).
Each night, Orenda Fink's darkly charismatic mother perches on a kitchen stool and insists that she and Orenda are magic. Orenda's mother claims to be a witch who uses her magic to protect the family from the outside world, but Orenda's childhood is marked by instability and uncertainty. Her family moves from town to town, chasing a fresh start whenever the money runs out.
Orenda escapes to pursue a music career in Birmingham, Alabama, and then Athens, Georgia, forming the bands Little Red Rocket and Azure Ray. The magic she finds in her music, and in her sense of self, feels precious and rare, while the magic her mother wields feels increasingly volatile. Orenda orbits the family home, always drawn back by her mother's dark powers and her own need to discover whether that claim of magic-or any magic-is real.
With the guidance of a Jungian psychotherapist, Orenda is stunned to learn that her mother fits many of the criteria associated with borderline personality disorder, including a subtype identified by famed thought leader Christine Ann Lawson known as “The Witch”-an aggressive, dominating figure who operates by fear-driven control, sometimes claiming to wield magic. Told in spellbinding prose, this memoir of music, self-discovery, and compassion is for anyone who has had to conjure a safe place to call home.
“Equal parts cutting and compassionate, this tale of hard-won peace will resonate with readers wrestling with their own complicated families” (Publishers Weekly).
1144388464
Each night, Orenda Fink's darkly charismatic mother perches on a kitchen stool and insists that she and Orenda are magic. Orenda's mother claims to be a witch who uses her magic to protect the family from the outside world, but Orenda's childhood is marked by instability and uncertainty. Her family moves from town to town, chasing a fresh start whenever the money runs out.
Orenda escapes to pursue a music career in Birmingham, Alabama, and then Athens, Georgia, forming the bands Little Red Rocket and Azure Ray. The magic she finds in her music, and in her sense of self, feels precious and rare, while the magic her mother wields feels increasingly volatile. Orenda orbits the family home, always drawn back by her mother's dark powers and her own need to discover whether that claim of magic-or any magic-is real.
With the guidance of a Jungian psychotherapist, Orenda is stunned to learn that her mother fits many of the criteria associated with borderline personality disorder, including a subtype identified by famed thought leader Christine Ann Lawson known as “The Witch”-an aggressive, dominating figure who operates by fear-driven control, sometimes claiming to wield magic. Told in spellbinding prose, this memoir of music, self-discovery, and compassion is for anyone who has had to conjure a safe place to call home.
“Equal parts cutting and compassionate, this tale of hard-won peace will resonate with readers wrestling with their own complicated families” (Publishers Weekly).
The Witch's Daughter: My Mother, Her Magic, and the Madness that Bound Us
Acclaimed indie musician and songwriter Orenda Fink's lyrical and moving memoir about growing up with a mother who battled mental illness and addiction is a “master text on surviving trauma as a child and adult” (Phoebe Bridgers).
Each night, Orenda Fink's darkly charismatic mother perches on a kitchen stool and insists that she and Orenda are magic. Orenda's mother claims to be a witch who uses her magic to protect the family from the outside world, but Orenda's childhood is marked by instability and uncertainty. Her family moves from town to town, chasing a fresh start whenever the money runs out.
Orenda escapes to pursue a music career in Birmingham, Alabama, and then Athens, Georgia, forming the bands Little Red Rocket and Azure Ray. The magic she finds in her music, and in her sense of self, feels precious and rare, while the magic her mother wields feels increasingly volatile. Orenda orbits the family home, always drawn back by her mother's dark powers and her own need to discover whether that claim of magic-or any magic-is real.
With the guidance of a Jungian psychotherapist, Orenda is stunned to learn that her mother fits many of the criteria associated with borderline personality disorder, including a subtype identified by famed thought leader Christine Ann Lawson known as “The Witch”-an aggressive, dominating figure who operates by fear-driven control, sometimes claiming to wield magic. Told in spellbinding prose, this memoir of music, self-discovery, and compassion is for anyone who has had to conjure a safe place to call home.
“Equal parts cutting and compassionate, this tale of hard-won peace will resonate with readers wrestling with their own complicated families” (Publishers Weekly).
Each night, Orenda Fink's darkly charismatic mother perches on a kitchen stool and insists that she and Orenda are magic. Orenda's mother claims to be a witch who uses her magic to protect the family from the outside world, but Orenda's childhood is marked by instability and uncertainty. Her family moves from town to town, chasing a fresh start whenever the money runs out.
Orenda escapes to pursue a music career in Birmingham, Alabama, and then Athens, Georgia, forming the bands Little Red Rocket and Azure Ray. The magic she finds in her music, and in her sense of self, feels precious and rare, while the magic her mother wields feels increasingly volatile. Orenda orbits the family home, always drawn back by her mother's dark powers and her own need to discover whether that claim of magic-or any magic-is real.
With the guidance of a Jungian psychotherapist, Orenda is stunned to learn that her mother fits many of the criteria associated with borderline personality disorder, including a subtype identified by famed thought leader Christine Ann Lawson known as “The Witch”-an aggressive, dominating figure who operates by fear-driven control, sometimes claiming to wield magic. Told in spellbinding prose, this memoir of music, self-discovery, and compassion is for anyone who has had to conjure a safe place to call home.
“Equal parts cutting and compassionate, this tale of hard-won peace will resonate with readers wrestling with their own complicated families” (Publishers Weekly).
25.99
In Stock
5
1
The Witch's Daughter: My Mother, Her Magic, and the Madness that Bound Us
The Witch's Daughter: My Mother, Her Magic, and the Madness that Bound Us
FREE
with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription
Or Pay
$25.99
25.99
In Stock
Editorial Reviews
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940160535623 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster |
| Publication date: | 08/06/2024 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Videos
From the B&N Reads Blog