BRIGHT EYES

Thelen-Heidel recounts a childhood shaped by her mother’s destructive decisions in this debut memoir.

Bridey Thelen moved a lot as a kid; by the time she graduated high school, she had attended 22 schools. The reason was her mother’s poor judgment concerning men—poor when it came to choosing them, poor when it came to keeping them, and poor when it came to keeping Bridey safe from them. From a silver school bus in Juneau, Alaska, to a motel in South Lake Tahoe, California, and many points in between, the moves frequently came without warning or explanation, leaving the author adrift and lonely as her relationships with friends, relatives, father figures, and even her dog—with anyone, in fact, besides her mother, the drug-using, party-loving Frankie—were abruptly and unceremoniously severed. Often left to figure out the ways of the world on her own (and to defend herself from the occasionally predatory behavior of her mom’s boyfriends), Bridey was forced to grow up quickly, doing her best to protect herself and, eventually, her younger sister, Bephens. Eventually, the author came to realize that her mother’s decisions could cost the smart, ambitious Bridey her shot at the life she wanted—and that Frankie was not simply the person who kept letting monsters into their lives but was, perhaps, a monster herself. Thelen-Heidel’s prose possesses both a charming warmth and a lyrical eye for the world around her. Here she describes seeing one of the many houses she and Frankie lived in for the first time: “A gust of wind slaps sticks and small rocks against the mud stained in patterns on the stucco—some darker and some light— reminding me of the patterns of bruises we’ve tried to heal—some deep and some old. All stained.” It’s a difficult read in many ways, but the young Bridey is such an irrepressible protagonist that it’s easy for the reader to find inspiration amid the squalor and heartache.

A deftly rendered portrait of a tragically toxic mother-daughter relationship.