Come Back: a mother and daughter’s journey through hell and back by Claire and Mia Fontaine

This mother-daughter memoir really packed an emotional wollop for me. For one, because my sister has been struggling with depression and substance abuse and is in a rehabilitation facility right now. Claire and Mia tell their stories about how at 15 Mia ran away from their Los Angeles home to live with street youth and ‘experience life.’ Mia had been hiding a dark, double life she had been leading—a darkness that led her to believe that she did not deserve a stable, comfortable life and could spare her parents pain if she ran away. Mia was abused by her biological father as a young child, and those emotional scars ran deep—something Claire was not wholly prepared for. When Mia was found in a skinhead’s van in Indiana, Claire decided to send her to a behavioral modification facility in the Czech Republic. Thus begins a year of hardship and emotional transformation for both Mia and Claire. The workshops and personal journeys that they undertake were the most powerful sections for me—for how honest they were, for the honesty the sessions demanded, and for what they learned about themselves and each other. I couldn’t put this book down, and was so thankful that they shared their stories.