LIVING IN THE LONG SHADOW by Suzanne Sherman - Spotlight

 

This poignant and compelling memoir, set in ’60s–’70s Los Angeles, traces a daughter’s experience of her mother’s schizophrenia and its lasting fallout before she ultimately reckons with her mother’s suicide and trusts in enduring love.

When Suzanne Sherman is four, her musically gifted mother is struck by sudden-onset schizophrenia, altering the course of Suzanne’s childhood.

Told in dual timelines—the years of her childhood and the two weeks following her mother’s suicide when Suzanne is eighteen—Living in the Long Shadow traces Suzanne’s coming of age in the shadow of mental illness as her family struggles with its far-reaching effects. As a teenager, Suzanne makes the difficult decision to leave her mother’s home and eventually moves in with her father and stepfamily. While her mother manages life on medication, Suzanne forms a friendship with her, sharing values, confidences, and a love of music and poetry. But a year after leaving Los Angeles for college, she learns that her mother, who was unable to live with the medication or without it, has taken her own life.
Ten years later, an extraordinary sign from her mother affirms the enduring presence of her love for her—and Suzanne's grief begins to make room for acceptance.

I’m dedicated to helping writers put their good words into the world.

I’m an author, writing coach and editor, memoir instructor, and publishing consultant with over four decades of experience. I specialize in memoir and other nonfiction.

Some of my memoir students and coaching clients write their books for family. They call me an invaluable guide. 

I began my publishing career as a magazine editor at Women’s Sports & Fitness and went on be associate editor at Ortho Books and a regular freelance editor for Ten Speed Press, Chronicle Books, and other Bay Area publishers before starting my own editing and consulting business in 1995 and teaching memoir at colleges and universities in California and Southern Oregon. My books are Lesbian and Gay Marriage: Private Commitments, Public Ceremonies (Temple University Press) and Girlhood in America: Personal Stories 1910 – 2010) (SZS Publishing). My memoir, Living in the Long Shadow: Surviving a Legacy of Mental Illness, will be published in fall 2026.

I have presented on memoir at the Redwood Writers’ Club, California Writers’ Club, Story Circle Network Conference, and the National Memoir Writers Association, and I was an editorial consultant for three years at the San Francisco Writers Conference. I have taught weekend memoir intensives and online classes at universities in California and Oregon, and have taught memoir at Santa Rosa Junior College for sixteen years. Currently, I have a weekly memoir workshop on Zoom. A video addressing self-exposure and the exposure of others in memoir is available on my site.

In Sonoma County, I write, study piano, take lizards away from my orange tabby cat Sunshine, and work with writers from around the country and around the world from the beauty of my countryside office.