About the Book
Felicia Sullivan’s volatile, beautiful, deceitful, drug-addicted mother disappeared on the night Sullivan graduated from college, and has not been seen or heard from in the ten years since. Sullivan, who grew up on the tough streets of Brooklyn in the 1980s, now looks back on her childhood—lived among drug dealers, users, and substitute fathers. Sullivan became her mother’s keeper, taking her to the hospital when she overdosed, withstanding her narcissistic rages, succumbing to the abuse or indifference of so-called stepfathers, and always wondering why her mother would never reveal the truth about the father she’d never met.
Ashamed of her past, Sullivan invented a persona to show the world. Yet despite her Ivy League education and numerous accomplishments, she, like her mother, eventually succumbed to alcohol and drug abuse. She wrote The Sky Isn’t Visible from Here, a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, when she realized it was time to kill her own creation.
Click here to read the first chapter (pdf download)
Advanced Praise
“An unforgettable story, breathtakingly told. This book will break your heart, and make it stronger.”
— Janice Erlbaum, author of Girlbomb
“That Felicia Sullivan survived her early life would be miracle enough. That she has painstakingly assembled the shards of her past into the glittering architecture of this extraordinary memoir strikes me as a considerable moral, human and artistic achievement. Read this book at your own peril. It will keep you awake at night and haunt your dreams.”
— Dani Shapiro, author of Family History and Black & White
“The story is a Brooklyn Cinderella’s; the endearing new voice is fresh. Funny, fierce, wobbling like a colt on new legs, Sullivan leaps from these pages as a fighter.”
— Lisa Dierbeck, author of One Pill Makes You Smaller
“Felicia Sullivan’s memoir is a brave and lovely one. It’s full of terrifying moments in the mean streets of Brooklyn as well as courageous ones in the complicated byways of familial love. Sullivan has created a world that’s beautifully crafted and powerfully inhabited. Brava.”
— Roxana Robinson, author of Sweetwater and A Perfect Stranger
