Riding Fury Home by Chana Wilson

In 1958, when Chana Wilson was seven, her mother attempted suicide with a rifle; the gun jammed and she was taken to a mental hospital. On her return, Chana became the caretaker of her heavily medicated, suicidal mother. Only years later did she learn the secret of her mother's anguish: a love affair with another married woman, and psychiatric treatment aimed at curing her lesbianism. Riding Fury Home spans forty years of their relationship: the trauma of their early years, the transformation and joy they found when they both came out in the 1970s, and the deep bond that grew between them. From the intolerance of the 1950s to the women's movement of the 1970s and beyond, it traces how the social landscape shaped two lives and one family's struggle against homophobia and mental illness.