Customer Reviews

Rescuing Patty Hearst: Growing Up Sane in a Decade Gone Mad

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I found Virginia Holman's Rescuing Patty Hearst to be deeply moving. I too have a family member who suffers from mental illness and can relate to the isolation, the shame, and the struggle to find help from the community. Her depiction of a child raised by a schizophrenic mother is heartbreaking. Children often explore the boundary between fantasy and reality, and here, her mother's psychosis blurs those lines even further. Her mother's delusions become enmeshed into her everyday life. As the author grows into a young woman, she begins to sense the immensity of what is lost, and a different kind of struggle begins. How can her mother be helped when she denies needing it? How can her father, her sister and herself cope with the enormous loss and live fulfilling lives when their world is dominated by an illness that destroys the woman they love? Holman's brave memoir is a testament to the enduring human spirit and to the power of love. Through this book she offers a powerful gift to the world, giving valuable insight into the lives of families torn asunder by mental illness.

In 1974, Virginia Holman was kidnapped. RESCUING PATTY HEARST is her ransom note.

The kidnapping was "custodial", which usually conjures up images of battery or abuse, or a divorce gone horribly wrong. The perpetrator here was not Holman's father or mother; instead, it was a disease. Holman's mother began experiencing delusions related to an undiagnosed case of schizophrenia. She came to believe that she was a soldier in a secret war and had to set up the family's vacation cottage on the Virginia coast as a field hospital to care for hordes of orphan children. But there were only two children in the small cottage --- Virginia and her baby sister --- and they were not being cared for.

Holman tells the story of her childhood experiences on two parallel tracks; each chapter has a date heading that explains whether a younger "Gingie" Holman, or her older, wiser contemporary counterpart is telling the story. We see what happens to Gingie, what she felt about it at the time, and how it affects her now. The author constantly evaluates and reevaluates her mother's actions and her own through the prism of time and experience, rotating back and forth in time to better understand what happened and why.

The book's subtitle is "Memories From A Decade Gone Mad"; its first line is "Nineteen seventy-four was a bad time to go crazy." Holman does not blame the excesses of the 1970's for her mother's illness, but makes the point that society was so topsy-turvy at that time that her mother's schizophrenia-induced actions seemed more normal than they otherwise might have. Holman's role model at that young age was Patricia Hearst, kidnapped heiress turned domestic terrorist. She is invoked as a symbol of the times, showing how stunning reversals in character and action can take place.

RESCUING PATTY HEARST is a beautifully realized portrait of a seventies childhood set against the backdrop of a devastating illness. Holman is blessed with both a powerful memory bank and astonishing skills at reviving the spirit of a lost civilization from the misty past. Some of this is unavoidably sentimental, but the areas of the book dealing with her mother's mental illness are starkly unsentimental. Holman's intimate knowledge of the disease is tinged with both sympathy and anger, leading to an honest, non-sensationalized portrayal of the reality of mental illness. Her memoir covers not only her mother's strange and powerful delusions, but also the day-to-day struggle that accompanies mental illness. Early on, Holman discusses an early delusion of her mother's that results in a stare of disgust from a harried salesman --- "a look," Holman writes, "that would become increasingly familiar in the years to come."

If Virginia Holman's mother had never experienced mental illness, there still would have been the makings of a memoir here; her portrayal of a childhood and a time is masterfully written and affecting. The presence of mental illness lends the book a wrenching quality, bringing home the reality of mental disability and the effects that it has on families and lives. Holman succeeds in describing her childhood; she triumphs in describing her mother, her illness and her plight. RESCUING PATTY HEARST is an extraordinary work, putting to shame more conventional or sentimental portrayals of mental illness.

--- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds

In the early 70s, Virginia Holman's mother kidnapped her to a shack on the Chesapeake Bay, painted the windows black, and recruited her to be a soldier in her hallucinated war to save the children. At times tender, often heartwrenching, and with lyric language, Holman's memoir uncovers the painful, secret lives of people who survive schizophrenia in the family. It is an extrarodinary story, told with astonishing honesty and beauty, and finally a sense of hope strong as forged steel.

Do not miss reading this book. It is stunning.

Virginia Holman's Rescuing Patty Hearst pulled me in from the very first pages. I couldn't put it down. The kids had to fix their own dinner, put themselves to bed, and I stayed up until a little past midnight to finish it. Hers is a story that is fascinating, painful, funny, and educational. She writes with great clarity and deftness and an honesty that is astonishing. I'm encouraging everyone in my family to read this book, and I think it should be on everyone's reading list, especially those with mentally ill family members or who work in the mental health profession.

I have been so tired of memoirs, but then I saw Rescuing Patty Hearst and had to pick it up. I grew up in the 70s, and had a pretty normal childhood, but I knew a family that reminded me of Holman's. As a child, we children just stayed away from the weird family, but now I begin to see what it must be like to live in such a strange household.

Holman's book is hard, but funny as hell in places--reminds me of the Liar's Club and This Boy's Life, two of my favorite books. And the seventies came back to me in full force. Watergate, the music, the clothes. Wow, wow, wow. This book is just so right on. All I have to say is I can't wait for the next book.

Keep on truckin!

I would like to thank Virginia Holman for writing this book.

Being the offspring of a mother diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, I was also brought up with maternal delusional thought processses and paternal helplessness. I know what a difficult story this is to narrate. Virginia Holman could not have done a better job.

"Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad" by Virginia Holman is an amazing memoir of mental illness, loneliness, and desperation. But, within such a dramatic framework is a tremendous tale of hope and discovery that you can't help but be uplifted and astonished by the sheer brilliance of Ms. Holman's talent.

This true story is so engrossing that you will find that you have finished it (it's not a long book by any means) before you even realize it. This is truly rare and amazing book --- I loved it and would recommend it to everyone. What a wonderful treat! Well done Ms. Holman.

I came across this book after hearing Holman speak at a Mental Health conference. Her talk and reading really brought to light the immense struggle of families who suffer with a severely mentally ill loved one. After the talk, people began standing up and telling their stories. I'm a scoail worker and I really didn't understand how many people struggle with ill loved ones
and how little help the legal and clinical system can provide to these families. It has certainly made me redouble my efforts
to listen, truly listen, and provide assistance to the family members I treat.
The book itself is truly remarkable. I have never read anything that really got to me the way this book did. Holman tells her story quietly and compellingly and without one iota of self-pity. Sometimes, she's pretty funny, too. I'm recommending it to all of my friends and colleagues.

Many readers will be drawn to this book because of its subject matter, a family traumatized by a mother's schizophrenia, and Holman's honest and bracing account of her experience is certainly an important addition to the literature of mental illness. But this is a book that deserves praise for more than just that. It is beautifully written and captures perfectly that period of girlhood just before adolescence. Holman's portrayal of the 'seventies does as good a job as any I know of, going beyond the smiley faces and the pet rocks to recall with great accuracy what it felt like to live then. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

This book is witty, provocative, engaging, and deeply touching. I don't know of any other memoir quite like this -- or any other childhood like the one Ms. Holman experienced and describes. This book deals with harrowing subject matter, injustices that no child should have to endure, but Ms. Holman tells her story in a voice that never elicits pity. On the contrary, this writer comes across as a strong, complex, and very amusing woman -- not to mention a talented storyteller.