AS SEEN ON THE DR. OZ SHOWSometimes family are the strangers who love youWhen Kelly was three weeks old, her mother lay her in a dresser drawer in a motel room in Hollywood and went out into the night. She never returned. Her strangled body was found the next morning on a hillside in LA. Raised by her eccentric grandfather on a boat in LA Harbor, Kelly couldn't help wondering how her life might have been different if her mother had lived. Every day at their rundown marina was an adventure, sometimes fun, sometimes dangerous, but always profoundly strange. Kelly longed for a normal life and for answers to her questions: who was her mother, exactly, and who had killed her? Her search for answers--and for a normal life--would lead her back to that night, that motel room, and the mother she never knew.We Are All Shipwrecks is Kelly's story of redemption from tragedy, told with a tenderness toward her family that makes it as much about preserving the strings that anchor her as it is about breaking free.
About the Author
Kelly Carlisle's personal essays have appeared in the New England Review, Salon.com, Ploughshares, and more. She has a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska and lives with her family in Texas, where she is an assistant professor at Trinity University. Visit her on Twitter @ProfKGC.