FOREWORD REVIEWS INDIES BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD, FINALIST 2016
READERS FAVORITE FIVE STARRED REVIEW, SILVER MEDALIST 2015
EAST TEXAS WRITERS' GUILD BOOK AWARDS, 3rd place, 2015
A basement apartment, an undertaker, three resilient kids, and the mysterious disappearance of their mother. Forty years later, in this heartbreaking, uplifting, and darkly humorous coming-of age memoir set in the 1970s and 1980s, one daughter explores the truth of what happened.
Heather Siegel was six years old when her mother disappeared, sending her funeral director father into a tailspin that took Heather and her siblings down with him-from a comfortable suburban home to a barely habitable basement apartment, a dark world they soon found themselves fighting to return to from the exile of foster care, then fighting even harder to escape. Forty years later, Heather Siegel tells the remarkable story of how she and her siblings, Jaz and Greg, banded together to find out what happened to their mother and fight their way Out from the Underworld with nothing but their wits, determination, unbreakable bonds and gifts for humor and compassion to sustain them. A wrenching, inspiring story filled with heartbreak, hope and love, Out from the Underworld will move you to laughter and tears.
PRAISE FOR OUT FROM THE UNDERWORLD:
"Heather Siegel has taken the raw material of an unusually deranged childhood, and done with it what very few can do: fashioned a piece of writing so smart, funny, and insightful that, as we read, we see the narrator growing from a street-smart little cynic into a remarkably understanding woman. More one cannot ask of any memoirist."
- Vivian Gornick
"A graduate summa cum laude of the school of hard knocks, Heather Siegel has written this dark, riveting memoir with refreshing if mordant humor, rueful tenderness and compassion. She is a stunningly gifted storyteller."
- Phillip Lopate
"Heather Siegel is a master storyteller like none I have encountered."
- Sarah Cottrell, HUFFINGTON POST BOOKS
"Heather Siegel's unforgettable memoir is authentically heartbreaking, but also filled with the kind of dark humor that will have any reader turning pages, eager to keep up with her masterful storytelling. Revelatory in many ways about childhood, parenting, family, identity, forgiveness and, above all, survival, Out From The Underworld examines some of life's greatest tragedies with admirable honesty, exquisite detail and a redemptive insight that is both inspiring and illuminating."
- Julia Fierro, author of CUTTING TEETH
"It's about mental attitude and how positive change is achieved against all odds, and it's about accepting parents for who they are rather than who they 'should' or could become. Out from the Underworld illuminates one woman's transformation and serves as a beacon guiding pathways of possibility for others to follow."
- Diane Donovan, MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
"Heather Siegel writes well - really well. And her story is so astonishing you'll be tempted to check the cover again to see the word "Memoir" - but memoir it is, and what a journey! Gripping and compelling, filled with the kind of nuanced details that only someone who lived through this could write. An impressive debut from a talented writer."
- C.E. Lawrence (Carole Bugge), award-winning author of the "SILENT" series thrillers
