Never simple : a memoir
(Playaway)

Title from container.

"Light."

Previously released by Macmillan Audio, ℗2022.

Release date supplied by publisher.

Issued on Playaway, a dedicated audio media player.

One set of earphones and one AAA battery required for listening.

Read by Amy Landon.

"Liz Scheier's mother was a news junkie, a hilarious storyteller, a fast-talking charmer you couldn't look away from, a single parent whose devotion crossed the line into obsession, and--when in the grip of the mental illness that plagued her--a masterful liar. On an otherwise uneventful afternoon when Scheier was eighteen, her mother sauntered into the room and dropped two bombshells. First, that she had been married for most of the previous two decades to a man Liz had never heard of and, second, that the man she had claimed was Liz's dead father was entirely fictional. She'd made him up--his name, the stories, everything. Those big lies were the start but not the end; it had taken dozens of smaller lies to support them, and by the time she was done she had built a half-true fairy-tale life for the two of them. Judith Scheier's charm was more than matched by her eccentricity, and Liz had always known there was something wrong in their home. After all, other mothers didn't raise a child single-handedly with no visible source of income, or hide their children behind fake Social Security numbers, or host giant parties in a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment only to throw raging tantrums when the door closed behind their departing guests. Now, decades later, armed with clues to her father's identity--and as her mother's worsening dementia reveals truths she never intended to share--Liz attempts to uncover the real answers to the mysteries underpinning her childhood. Trying to construct a 'normal' life out of decidedly abnormal roots, she navigates her own circuitous path to adulthood: a bizarre breakup, an unexpected romance, and the births of her son and daughter. Along the way, Liz wrestles with questions of what we owe our parents even when they fail us, and of how to share her mother's hilarity, limitless love, and creativity with her children--without passing down the trauma of her mental illness."--,Provided by publisher.