Augusta, Gone: A True Story

True, she had stopped coming down for breakfast. Stayed up in her room, ran out the door late for school, missed the bus and had to have a ride. But you think, well, that’s how they are, aren’t they, teenagers? And you try to remember how you were, but you were different and the times were different and it was so long ago. And she’s suddenly so angry at you, but then, another time, she’s just the same. She’s just your little girl. You sit with her and you talk about something, or you go shopping for school clothes and everything seems all right. And you forget how you stood in her room and how the center of your stomach felt so cold. When you found the cigarette. When you found the blue pipe. When you found the little bag she said was aspirin.

Augusta, Gone is the story of a girl who is doing everything to hurt herself and a mother who would try anything to save her.

Praise for Augusta, Gone

“This manic, wrenching memoir is a staggeringly honest and compelling portrayal of the highs and hells of motherhood.” - Glamour

“Essential reading…Dudman’s blunt, honest writing searingly articulates the agony of a mother…An unflinching description of an adolescent rebellion…memoir at its best.” - New York Times Book Review

“A daring memoir. From the opening passage, there are signs Augusta, Gone will be an unusual memoir stylistically and substantively.” - St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Martha Tod Dudman’s writing is amazing. So simple, so precise, so correct.” – Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation and Bitch

“A painful close-up of a horrible time, this memoir is still a story of salvation.” – US News & World Report

“Dudman’s writing is clear and powerful.” – Atlantic Journal-Constitution