In The Long Journey Home, their mother, Margaret Robison, finally gets to tell her side of the story, which is more nuanced and poignant than one would ever imagine. Beginning with her childhood in southern Georgia, with its faĆade of 1950s propriety masking all sorts of recognizable demons (alcoholism, sexual repression, misogyny, suicide, and disease) up until her mental breakdown and, in recent years, her recovery from her massive stroke, The Long Journey Home is Robison's attempt to make sense of a complicated, often tortured, and complex American life. She writes movingly and honestly about her shortcomings as a parent, her difficult marriage, and her two now-famous children. An accomplished poet and artist, Robison tells the heartbreaking but ultimately uplifting story of a woman trapped by social convention in a time when escaping cultural expectations was harder than we now can remember.