The Momma Puzzle: A Memoir

In February 1968, Hilary Plattner's mother died by suicide. It was the height of the Vietnam war and Hilary was six years old. Years later, in an attempt to understand the mystery of her mother's death, she studies the items her mother left behind: photographs and a file of papers from the 1950s when Momma worked as a Foreign Service secretary in Saigon. Hilary pores over letters written to her future father, her grandmother, and to her mother's best friend. She dreams of burning the pile of documents in a bonfire, and simply being done with it all. But she continues her investigation and eventually discovers an important piece of the puzzle: her mother's medical records from a psychiatric hospital. Ultimately, she forms an image of who Momma was--and finds a way to release herself from the hold of her family history.