Lies My Mother Never Told Me

One woman's memoir about her alcoholism and struggle to flourish despite the looming shadow of a famous father and an emotionally abusive, damaged mother.

Her mother was a brainy knockout with sultry beauty, a raconteur whose fierce wit could shock an audience into hilarity or silence. Her father was the distinguished National Book Award–winning author of four renowned World War II novels. A daughter of privilege with a seemingly fairy-tale-like life, Kaylie Jones was raised in the Hamptons via France in the 1960s and '70s, surrounded by the glitterati who orbited her famous father, James Jones. Legendary for their hospitality, her celebrated parents held court in their home around an antique bar—a French village church's eighteenth-century wooden pulpit—playing host to writers, movie stars, film directors, socialites, diplomats, an emperor, and even the occasional spy.

Her beloved father showed Kaylie the value of humility, hard work, and education. From her mother, Gloria, she learned perfect posture, the twist, and soul-shattering cruelty. When her father died from heart failure complicated by years of drinking, sixteen-year-old Kaylie was lost. She was powerless to withstand her mother's withering barbs and criticism, or halt Gloria's further descent into a bottle—or her own. For years after her father's death, Kaylie denied the blackouts, the hangovers, the rage, the depression. Broken and bereft, she read her father's novels and found the courage to write her own story, addressing her addiction.

Deeply intimate, brutally honest, yet limned by humor and grace, Lies My Mother Never Told Me is a beautifully written tale of personal evolution, family secrets, second chances, and one determined woman's journey to find her own voice—and the ability to embrace a life filled with possibility, strength, and love.