The Parts of Him I Kept

One cold night in April, Natasha's father drove his car into the frigid water of New York Bay with her two-year-old half-sister in the backseat. She was the one to walk him past the column of hungry reporters demanding an explanation.

The headline in The Daily News read: Back from a Watery Grave. But Natasha's experiences growing up with her schizophrenic father in the gritty New York City of the 1970s are not so easily captured in a single headline. How could she possibly convey the power of her father's love in the face of this tragedy?

The Parts of Him I Kept is an intimate account of coming of age in the face of a father's schizophrenic unraveling. In the tradition of Michael Greenberg's Hurry Down Sunshine and Robert Kolker's Hidden Valley Road, Williams explores the limits of our understanding of schizophrenia and chronicles the burden and privilege of caring for a mentally ill family member.