Title: Self-portrait with ghosts
First published: 1999
Description: Kate Flannigan has done pretty well for herself. After a disaster of a first marriage, she's going with a great guy who is crazy about her, she has raised a loving, if slightly rebellious, teenage daughter, and has made a name for herself as a ceramist, an accomplished sculptor of portraits. She has worked hard to meet the demands of single motherhood and, at the same time, to put her sister Colleen's betrayal behind her.

Kate's brother, Luke, hasn't done so well. Haunted by the early death of his father, he has struggled with depression for most of his life, and kept it a secret from his family.

Only Audrey, Kate's daughter, is able to crack through her uncle's solitude. To her, Luke isn't just a substitute for the father who left years ago - he is the only person she believes will always tell her the truth. When Luke commits suicide, the family is forced to reexamine the deceptions that have torn it apart, and to face and forgive the past and present, the real and imagined ghosts.

Told through three compelling and distinctively rich voices - Kate's, Audrey's, and Luke's - Self-Portrait with Ghosts is about the pain that leads to suicide, as well as the pain that suicide leaves behind. It is about the many ways we betray the people closest to us, sometimes without even knowing it, and about the healing powers of grief, forgiveness, and love.
Subjects: Fathers and daughters, Pottery craft, Single mothers, Fiction, Suicide victims, Sisters, Fiction, ghost, Fiction, psychological, Fathers and daughters, fiction, California, fiction, Sisters, fiction, Women, Suicide, Families
Places: Southern California
LC classification: PS3554.W93 S45 1999