Phoebe Hoss discusses her memoir All Eyes: A Mother’s Struggle to Save Her Schizophrenic Son, A Carolina Wren Press release

Sat 4/10 2pm

Carolina Wren Release Party

Phoebe Hoss discusses All Eyes: A Mother’s Struggle to Save Her Schizophrenic Son

 “Families of people with mental illness will want to read this book, if for no other reason than to encounter a version of their own tale retold with clarity, compassion, and amazing honesty. Though readers will have different children, with different problems, and most hopefully, different outcomes, parents especially will recognize their own daily struggles when they read about Phoebe Hoss’s long fight to endure, to manage and to save her schizophrenic son. Her memoir, set during the 1970s and ’80s, is especially relevant to those struggling with mental illness today, because Hoss is graced and cursed with the perspective of hindsight. This tale of love and loss is at once harrowing and redemptive, and Hoss does not hold back—she lays bare the failings and miscues of American family life, our communities, and our precarious health care system. —LYNN YORK, author of The Piano Teacher

“This searing memoir unflinchingly probes the conflicts and anguishing choices that can imprison a family trying to cope with the terrors of mental illness. That Phoebe Hoss never gave up trying to help her son, not even in the face of insulting and destructive mental health professionals, is a tribute to her intelligence, determination, maternal commitment, and questing spirit. She has written a brave, soul-searching book. All Eyes opened mine.” —ALIX KATES SHULMAN, author of To Love What Is

“A vivid and compelling read. A rare and poignant view of a mother’s life with a schizophrenic child. The extraordinarily

heavy toll of a child’s illness and suicide on the entire family is portrayed elegantly by an extraordinarily fine writer.”

—IRVIN YALOM, author of Love’s Executioner

PHOEBE HOSS is the author of two books for children, Noses are for Roses and Better Never Than Late. She was the co-translator of The View From Afar by Claude Lévi-Strauss, and the editor of two books of poetry: River Voices, by the poets of Stuyvesant Cove Park, and Offerings II, poems by the members of the Unitarian Church of All Souls, NYC.

About the press:  Carolina Wren Press publishes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books. The Press is committed to an ever-growing vision of the audience for, and the producers of, contemporary literature.

Carolina Wren Press gratefully acknowledges the ongoing support of the Durham Arts Council and the North Carolina Arts Council.