Happy Release Day!
Congratulations Maura
on the release today of
Saving Ellen!
Saving Ellen: A Memoir of Hope and Recovery by Maura Casey
Memoir, Women's Biographies, 336 pages
Published April 1, 2025 by Skyhorse
A coming-of-age memoir that follows a large, working-class Irish family as it plunges into chaos in the wake of a terminal diagnosis—and the author's own hidden struggle to endure when her sister's disease becomes the dark star around which they all revolve.
Financial privation and her father’s drunken scenes formed the backdrop to Maura Casey's childhood, but her sister Ellen’s years-long struggle with kidney disease consumed her whole family. Determined to see Ellen live to adulthood, her mother fought medical advice to donate a kidney at a time when organ transplants were medical miracles. She concealed the true impact of that decision, which would affect the family for years to come.
Set in Buffalo amidst the tumult of the 1960s and 70s, Saving Ellen traces the author's recovery from alcoholism and sexual assault and tells of her irrepressible older sister Ellen, who fought to claim her dream of becoming an athlete; her smart, feminist mother, whose World War II Army service prepared her to manage her own platoon of six children; and her adulterous, alcoholic father who, at the end, was haunted by his shortcomings and regrets. Despite the hard truths of her childhood, Saving Ellen is ultimately a story of humor at unexpected moments as well as the grace of reconciliation and gratitude.
Saving Ellen will appeal to those who have endured the stress of caring for a chronically ill family member, with all the fraught choices that entails. Readers who have experienced the unique insanity of living in a large alcoholic family will recognize the mix of madness and humor that forms the foundation of daily life. Casey's story has parallels to Monica Wood’s When We Were the Kennedys, which details the struggle her family began when her father died of a heart attack, and Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle, with its tale of family dysfunction and siblings trying to help one another cope in a dilapidated house with an unstable father.
My thoughts about Saving Ellen ~~
(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first lines.)
First lines—"The floorboards groaned. The noise cracked in the silence between my father's wheezing snores. I froze on all fours, in full view of Dad's mountainous form, my panic rising."
I was first drawn to this story because of the kidney transplant issue that Ellen goes through in the early 70's when the procedure was not that common. I had a classmate who had to have a transplant when we were in high school so this story spoke to me on that level. Saving Ellen is so much more then Ellen's medical struggles. It is a story of the entire family and the dysfunction that was their lives in the 60's and 70's.
The author does a great job telling the story of her family and all that they endured. This is a biographical memoir that reads like an expertly written fiction story. The words that flowed off of the pages kept me entranced and made me want to keep reading. The Casey family endured a lot, with ups and downs all over the place. Emotions ran high and pulled me in. And there are even surprising twists that complete the book in a satisfactory way.
I received an ARC of Saving Ellen and this is my honest opinion of the book.
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About the author
Maura Casey grew up the youngest of six in a Buffalo, NY, Irish family. She began writing at 12 , turning her passion into a 30+ journalism career, winning over 40 awards. Maura is a former editorial writer for The New York Times and three other newspapers. Currently she writes a weekly column on Substack with thousands of subscribers called Casey's Catch. Readers can contact her through her column or her website, www.CaseyInk. She is a gifted editor, writing coach and public speaker.
Maura used the diaries she wrote as a teenager to help write the book. She was surprised to see that they had pages of dialogue, her mother’s wit, scenes of her sister’s determination and her father’s alcoholism. From her diaries she fashioned a narrative arc that became Saving Ellen: A Memoir of Hope and Recovery.
Maura lives on a small farm in Connecticut with her husband of 41 years, two golden retrievers and a cat who is Queen of the Barn. She has two adult children and two perfect granddaughters. ~ Goodreads
Connect with Maura
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