What happens when you reveal your family’s darkest secret in a memoir?
In a new trade paperback edition (coming on February 22) of High on Arrival, Mackenzie Phillips wrote about her family’s response to her dark memoir. Phillips–the daughter of Mamas and the Papas rock star, John Phillips–wrote of an extended incestuous relationship with her father.
Here’s how her family reacted, an excerpt from the upcoming paperback: “To my family, it felt like I was breaking from them. This is the nature of a family where incest germinates … my family stayed loyal to the cult of my father … The book came out in the fall. My siblings invited me to Thanksgiving, then univited me. But not all of my family disappeared. My mother, who loved my father and still does, was unflinchingly supportive and proud.”