I’d like to thank One World/Random House and Netgalley for so generously providing me a copy of Dog Flowers. All opinions are, of course, my own.

"I was angry at things outside our control. I was angry at the broken communities we were born into, and the godly men who perpetuated the cycles of abuse. Who told us to seek happiness in ignorance and faith in a God who seemed indifferent to our suffering. Who taught us to forgive too readily, and that forgiveness restored power, when in my experience, forgiveness had only taken my power away."

In Dog Flowers, Danielle Geller rips your heart out. She presents her own life in this heart-wrenching memoir that partly revisits her childhood and young adulthood and partly her mother’s life.

Geller recalls all the moments that shaped her and they’re not necessarily pretty. Everything from abuse, neglect, abandonment, hopelessness, mental illness, and loneliness.

The memoir begins in real-life after her mother’s death and in the book it begins when Danielle receives a phone call that her mother, Lauren “Tweety” Lee is in the hospital, dying. She makes the decision to go despite the hell she went through.

Her mother was never a real presence in her life. Her and her sister, Eileen, were shuffled from their alcoholic and abusive father and their grandmother (father’s mother).

After visiting her mother in the hospital, Danielle returns to Boston with a suitcase full of letters, receipts, diaries, and photos from her mother’s relatively short life.

This memoir is heavy, raw, and doesn’t hold anything back. Not only does it bring to light very important issues that many face whether it be abandonment, abuse, alcoholism, addiction, and more, but it also gives a real snippet into the life of Navajo culture and what it’s like to be born into a life where the cards are stacked against you.

The style of writing was a bit unusual for me, but I soon came to love it. Danielle can abruptly change scenes, but somehow it works.

This is a great book. Thanks for letting me read and review this title. I appreciate it..............

I felt split reading this one. Geller could be at times revealing and then at times oddly distanced from what's clearly very personal writing. Coupled with the jumps in narration (not only in chronology but also in geography and even social interactions, as when people who are apparently very important in her life pop in and out with little or no context), it made it hard to feel an emotional connection to the story.

I also would have liked some clarity as to why I should read this book (beyond simple human empathy, and I realize that point sounds harsh). Memoirs typically are inspiring, informative about a time or place, etc. This one did tell a difficult story and we see a woman rise above her situation, but only barely and not with encouragement for us. Maybe I wanted some dots connected for me, or maybe I wasn't in the right state to get there (there's plenty of empathy to go around for some of the people in this book). I also would have enjoyed more integration of the other components -- the photos, letters, diary entries, etc. -- although to be fair that might be more about my expectations than about the book's execution.

That said, I'm glad I read it, and I especially appreciated the final third or so of the book. Geller writes well, but it just didn't all come together for me with this one.

This was a beautiful memoir of a daughter learning more about her mother and her own childhood by going through the things her mother left behind. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC.

This is an incredible memoir. The author wrote it while coming to terms with her unanchored childhood after her mother dies. Though she is of Navajo descent, her mother left the reservation before giving birth to her children so she grew up off the reservation and rarely saw her. She is given a collection of her mother's journals, photos, and letters after her death. The facts are heartbreaking. It reveals a life of addiction, abuse, and homelessness. The journey into finding out who her mother was opens her eyes to see her own cultural identity and she returns to the reservation to find the family she never knew. I loved how she wove all the various letters and diary entries into her own memories. It makes for a heartbreaking but powerful story.

3.5 stars. I have loved learning about and reading more from Native American authors. Danielle Geller returns to Florida to retrieve a suitcase full of pictures after her mother dies of alcohol withdrawal. Interspersed with photos and images from her mother's suitcase, this is really the story of Danielle-- the struggles of her childhood, her alcoholic mother, father, and sister, and her connection to the Navajo reservation. This is a difficult story, of a young woman, who, despite her self-reflection during her mother's memorial service on the reservation, is actually a caretaker of her whole family, even her parents. This is a sad and touching novel about family.

Beautiful, precise writing. Geller doesn't shy away from trauma but neither does she let it define her life and experience. A moving story that is at times heavy but ends in a place of lightness.

Dog Flowers is a memoir where Danielle Geller explores seeing the world through her mother's eyes following her death. The memoir shows Danielle learning about her mother's stories and connecting with her mother's family. The memoir covers a long period of time very well, jumping between time while not being confusing at all to the reader. I really enjoyed this memoir and I would recommend giving it a chance!

Content warning for domestic abuse, death of a parent, drug and alcohol abuse, and homelessness.

Upon her mother's unexpected death, Danielle Geller sorts through her mother's small collection of belongings—receipts, job applications, photos and diaries—and visits her mother's birthplace, a Navajo reservation, in order to piece together the story of her own childhood. A childhood ruled by alcoholism, poverty and near-constant loss. A childhood mostly absent of her mother.

In opposition to the subject of this memoir, the writing has an easy clarity that kept me going even when the story is quite painful. You move seamlessly back through the author's recollections, media fragments and the present in a way that reminds me of how we easily slip into our own memories when given a few minutes of silence. I'm grateful for this story but also for the author's stylistic choices in telling it. In combination they make for an illuminating book.

I like to think of myself as pretty critical of my country, The United States, and its' systemic injustices. But sometimes you read something that gives you a new lens with which to view the place you live. Dog Flowers is one such book.

My review for Shelf Awareness is here: https://www.shelf-awareness.com/readers-issue.html?issue=989#m17285

The review was also cross-posted to Smithsonian BookDragon: http://smithsonianapa.org/bookdragon/dog-flowers-by-danielle-geller-in-shelf-awareness/

Danielle Geller’s engrossing new memoir, Dog Flowers, reads like an unputdownable novel. This graceful, empathetic book deals with her acceptance of a deeply flawed family and problems of identity.

Raised in Pennsylvania by her white grandmother but a member of the Navajo nation in Arizona, Geller grew up in a stable home but took for granted the problems of her drunken, divorced, often homeless parents. When her father appears at their grandmother’s house drunk or violent, this is everyday family life. Geller and her sister Eileen are deeply affected emotionally, but Geller concentrates on telling the story and not on describing their emotions.

The impetus for the memoir is the death of her mother, Lee, who dies homeless in a hospital in Florida. Danielle flies from Boston to Florida, the only relative who visits. Danielle’s sister Eileen has a drug problem, and screams at her on the phone when she hears the news. So Danielle holds it all together: a nurse questions her presence, because she’d been told Lee had no family, and Danielle is upset by their assumptions about homelessness. And we readers learn about the challenges that kept Lee from living a normal life.

After Lee’s death, Danielle finds scraps of her mother’s writing, diaries, and letters among her belongings. She cherishes these scraps, which show her mother’s love for her daughters and appreciation of their relationship. Later, Danielle is trained in library school as an archivist. And so she archives her mother’s writings, using them as footnotes to this narrative.

Geller’s writing is flawless, graceful, and moving. Her writing reminds me slightly of Pam Houston’s. An excellent read.

I really dislike having to rate memoirs, as I think it is impossible to pass judgment on another person's life experience. My rating is more of a reflection of how readable I found the telling of the story, and in this case, it took a bit of time to get into it. With her mother's death, she is left with photos and random documents that leave an incomplete picture of who she was, but Geller fills in with details of her own upbringing and tumultuous familial relationships. You cannot help but feel for her as she constantly tries to support various family members' sobriety. There is a lot that remains a mystery, which is frustrating as a reader, but I can only imagine how it must feel for Geller.

Danielle Geller unravels her family’s troubled lives in this heart-wrenching memoir. After her mother Laureen “Tweety” Lee dies from alcohol withdrawal, she takes her mother’s belongings “packed into eight suitcases” and begins a self-discovery journey. She weaves in her personal story from childhood as she tries to find out more about her mother’s past from Laureen’s departure from a Navajo reservation at age 19.

Danielle Geller shares her dark memories of her childhood with us, being abandoned by her mother and father to their addictions, her journey in finding herself, and finding a way to make peace with her family’s path. Her memoir is beautifully written with her quiet tone however, her story is heavy. A good part of her memoir tells us about her family’s addictions and her troubled relationships with them as she shares with us her struggles with her father and sister’s addictions with alcohol, who come and go from her life as they are drawn into the relentless cycle of addiction. It weighed heavy on me, and I wanted to look away from the story. I would have liked to know more about Danielle Geller’s journey. The beauty in her story is her strength in her caring, quiet words as she carries that weight, her path to self-discovery and healing as she unravels her mother’s destructive path.

I struggled with her writing flow that felt choppy and distant with her telling us her family’s story, and I wanted to feel more connected to her by seeing her story. However, this is Danielle Geller’s personal story, and that is a “me thing.”

This memoir by Geller explores her upbringing and the emotions the death of her mother uncovers. She talks about getting to know many of her family members after the passing of her mother, and of her relationships with them.
The book tells many small stories that are often tragic, but Geller seems detached. The emotions these events should have evoked don’t come through. The timeline for the book is a bit jumbled; this is a non-linear story.
I give this book 2 stars. I simply didn’t feel involved in the tragedy that Geller has experienced. Her style of writing feels disjointed to me, halting and emotionless. Her descriptions of emotions experiences are there, but the feelings themselves never visited me. Maybe memoirs are not for me.
This book was a NetGalley gift from the publisher, Random House - One World. The opinions shared in this review are my own and I have received no compensation in exchange for offering them.

3.5 stars. Heartbreaking and hopeful.

“You’re an alcoholic,” grandma would tell me, even when I was very young. “You just haven’t had your first drink.”

Danielle Geller tells her personal story through this heart wrenching and touching memoir. She is trying to find a trace of meaning in her mother’s life of alcohol and men. She is also searching for a sense of self, of family, of belonging. Danielle returns to her deceased mother’s Navajo reservation to piece together her mothers broken life through personal journals, belongings and family stories. Danielle’s mother lived an extremely rough life of alcoholism, men and homelessness. Danielle’s father faced the same demons with alcohol and floated in and out of Danielle’s life. Danielle and her younger sister Eileen were raised mainly by their grandmother.

What a heartbreaking memoir. What this author has lived through is gut wrenching. It is a very tough read. The endless cycle of alcoholism, drugs, poverty, jail and homelessness was heartbreaking. This book is brutally honest, eye-opening and raw. Alcoholism ran deep through their family - every generation filled with anger, frustration and the limitations of alcoholism and drug addiction.

I found similarities to Jesse Thistle’s memoir, From The Ashes, although this was not as polished. The story is powerful and eye-opening but I found the writing lacked flow and felt repetitive. Upon reflection I wonder if the choppy writing was the intention of the author as her entire childhood and young adult life was a vicious circle of instability.

The book focus was on Danielle trying to connect with her mother’s past, but I found the relationship between Danielle and her sister Eileen to be most impactful. The vicious circle of drugs and alcohol that kept the sisters from truly bonding and kept Danielle hanging on and hopeful for a different outcome for her sister was gut wrenching. I felt for Danielle.

I imagine the writing of this book would have been therapeutic for the author. I appreciate her honesty in presenting her family struggles to the world and hope this can be helpful to others who may be able to relate to her situation.

As sad as this book is, I found it hopeful. Though Danielle’s hope was crushed time and time again, she never completely lost her longing for a better life for her family and herself.

Thank you to NetGalley for the review copy!

Brutally honest and heartfelt.

Danielle's story made me think a lot about family and a person's roots.
There's a saying that loosely states: "You have to know where you come from so that you know where you're going".

This to me contains the essence of this story - I feel the theme of "loss and directionless" in both sisters' lives. Once Danielle makes contact with her mother's family, as dysfunctional as they may be, she seems to find a bit more focus and direction in her life.

It makes me ponder the reasons her and Alex struggle to connect. Aside from the obvious reason of not growing up together, the fact that Alex had a more "normal" childhood with a mother that was a stable influence seems to be the main reason her and Danielle don't really connect.

I loved "Tweety's" definition of Dog Flowers - I glanced at the wet pawprints of my own dogs on the front steps and had to agree that dog flowers an apt definition is.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me to read this book.

The author tells the story of her mother who is homeless using her box belongings. The story includes her homeless father and substance abusing center Grief makes this relatable. The Navajo background of her mother is explored. A hard life is eloquently portrayed in these pages.

Copy provided by the publisher and NetGalley

Thank you to Netgally and Random House Publishers for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I give this book a solid 5 stars.  Danielle Geller is a truly wonderful author with a gift for allowing the reader an unvarnished but compassionate look into her life.  She discusses at length how her mother was a caretaker and able to care for others, and how she is not.  Ms. Geller is not a caretaker of people, but she is a caretaker of other people's truths.  She is able to take care of the truths of herself, her parents, her sisters and her people and create a powerful book.

Dog Flowers is the diary of Danielle Geller, a girl on a journey to the past to find out her mother's truth while in tandem finding her own journey. Having drug and alcohol abuse in my own family, I instantly identified with Danielle in a lot of ways, her words evoking memories of my own past, and unlocking pain that I have carefully tucked away, not yet wanting to deal with. The courage and bravery that Danielle shows by putting her words out there, and sharing her remarkable story, is commendable.

Like a diary, the writing is imperfectly perfect, each chapter focusing on a different facet of life, cohesively going back and forth, from the past to the present. The pan and anguish of finding her mother's life, while trying to find her own, is evident on every page, the vibes making this a depressing, yet surprisingly educational read.

To get a glimpse into another person's life like this is why I am so drawn to memoirs. In Dog Flowers Danielle even includes photos that she found in her mother's things, describing each photo in detail, adding even more depth to the already heavy narrative, bonding you more and more to Danielle and her family.

I found Dog Flowers to be a hard, yet wonderfully powerful story of self-discovery, and motivates me to look to my own family, and find those truths that have been too painful to know.

It could have been subtitled “The Book I Wanted to Stop Reading but Couldn’t.” Danielle Geller writes a memoir in which she opens her life to readers and demonstrates amazing strength. Adopted by her paternal grandmother because her parents were alcoholics, her life was a mountain of hurtles. She was continually rescuing and providing shelter for her father and addicted sister. She moved from relationship to relationship. After her mother’s death, she reconnected with family members on the Navajo reservation. Her powerful story is illustrated with photos she found after her mother died. Using her archival training, she adds pictures in archival style as footnotes. She uses her education as a creative writer to write a heart wrenching story of her reconnection to her Navajo family and the future she hopes to have.