Life Stories #36: Alysia Abbott

When Alysia Abbott was young, her mother died in a car wreck, and her father took her to San Francisco, where he was determined to raise her on his own. She thought he was never able to love another woman after her mom's death; the truth, she would discover years later, was more complicated than that. Fairyland is a powerful memoir of growing up with a gay parent at a time when that was still virtually unheard of -- and a vivid recreation of what that was like from her father's perspective, as well.