Book Review: The Good Sister by Drusilla Campbell

Here is what the good reads said about it.

Roxanne Callahan has always been her younger sister's caretaker. Now married, her happiness is threatened when beautiful and emotionally unstable Simone, suffering from crippling postpartum depression, commits an unforgivable crime for which Roxanne comes to believe she is partially responsible.
In the glare of national media attention brought on her sister, Roxanne fights to hold her marriage together as she is drawn back into the pain of her troubled past and relives the fraught relationship she and Simone shared with their narcissistic mother. At the same time, only she can help Simone's nine year old daughter, Merell, make sense of the family's tragedy.
Cathartic, lyrical, and unflinchingly honest, The Good Sister is a novel of four generations of women struggling to overcome a legacy of violence, lies and secrecy, ultimately finding strength and courage in their love for each other.

I read the other reviews and I agree with some and not with others.  One person said she wanted more about the disease.  That is a hard one.  To get into the deep part of depression is to live it.  To write about it is only a small part of the story. 

The depth of despair, the feeling that dying would be better than a life like this.  The feeling that you wish you were someone else, anyone else.  The hopelessness.  If the writer has written about the depression itself the book would have been so depressing no one would finish it.  The story is more than just the disease of postpartum depression; it is a look at how it affects everyone in the family.  It is also a look at how we perceive our family and loved ones.  There is more than one side.  What may look rosey is in reality not. 

I believe the writer did a good job.  She gave glimpses of what a depressed person would feel or how they would react or not react as it goes.  In trying to help another we become an enabler of sorts.  The book is a glaring example of that.  It is human nature at its best and worst. 

Other books by Drusilla Campbell. 

Blood Orange

The Edge of Night

Wildwood. 

To find out more click here.  drusillacampbell.com