The Momma Puzzle

In February 1968, Hilary Plattner's mother died by suicide. It was the height of the Vietnam war and Hilary was six years old. For years, she studied the items her mother left behind: photographs, and a file of personal papers from the 1950s when her mother worked in Saigon as a secretary for the Foreign Service. She pored over her mother's letters to a best friend and to her mother, plus more letters to Hilary's future father. She dreams of burning the piles of documents in a bonfire. Instead, she begins directly addressing her mother and her grandfather, who also died by suicide. Then she discovers her mother's medical records from a psychiatric hospital. Ultimately, she forms an image of who Momma was-and finds a way to release herself from the pull of her family history.