Books by Mary Allen

"A love story, a memoir, a haunting tale of grief and healing. This book is all that and more." --Chicago TribuneIn the tradition of Susanna Kaysen''s Girl, Interrupted and Caroline Knapp''s Drinking: A Love Story, Mary Allen tells a riveting love story that explores the uncharted territory between passion and  addiction, grief and madness, this world and the next.When Mary Allen falls in love with Jim Beaman, she doesn''t know he has a drug problem, but she does sense demons and angels around him, like "a disturbance in the air, a sound just beyond the register of human hearing." And when Jim--discouraged and depressed, struggling with his addiction--kills himself a year into their relationship, Allen is unable to let him go. In her desperate attempts to recover from the loss, she uses a Ouija board and automatic writing to pull back from reality into the dark recesses of her mind, where she believes she can find him. The result is a mesmerizing trip across the boundaries between this world and the afterlife, a journey that leads her to the brink of insanity and ultimately back to herself.

This book examines how women experiencing domestic violence employ strategies of resistance and survival, and how narrative therapy helps them define their identities and resist abuse. It demonstrates how an understanding of this resistance can help practitioners effectively intervene and support these women in transitions from abuse to safety.