Some Other Joy by Lockhart

About the book

Setting: Some Other Joy takes place in Dallas in 1986 and covers a six-month time frame. This memoir is an account of one family's struggle following their daughter's diagnosis of Multiple Personality Disorder.

Characters: The three main characters are: a twelve-year old child, Stevie, who is telling the story through the journal a psychologist has asked her to keep; the child's mother, Joy, who has recently been diagnosed as having Multiple Personality Disorder; and the Grandmother, Evie, who, to save the child from further trauma, is forced to file for custody.

Conflict: As the memoir begins, the child has been removed from the home of her father with whom she has lived since her mother deserted her at the age of five. She adores her father even though she is bothered by his lifestyle. This lifestyle includes nudity, drugs, and sexually explicit material in the home.

Her mentally ill mother, fearing that she is being abused, kidnaps the child and hatches a bizarre plan to get her into a foster home. After their car runs out of gas on the Interstate, they leave and spend the night in a dumpster, where the mother passes out and nearly dies. The child wanders the highway late at night in order to find help.

From the hospital where she is recovering, the mother resumes the pressure on the child to say she is afraid of her father. Not wanting to upset her mother, the child says nothing; the mother takes this silence for agreement and, through the assistance of her psychiatrist, notifies Children's Protection Society. Hearing that the child will be taken from the Father, the grandparents petition and are awarded custody.

When the child comes to live with the grandparents she is hostile, confused, consumed with guilt over betraying her Dad and terrified that, like her Mom, she will have a breakdown. She believes her mother has had so many breakdowns because she has had so many breakthroughs. She is determined not "to lose it." This growing conflict and tension is revealed through the day-to-day events in the child's life, (humorous, tragic, and a blend of both), letters, flashbacks and the grandmother's memories.

Resolution: The story's resolution focuses upon the child facing what happened at the dumpster, her admission that she lied about being afraid of her Father and her eventual return to his home. Through Stevie's irreverent in-your-face-style, the reader experiences the universal themes of lost innocence, betrayal, hope and redemption that are necessary to survive in a world that precludes understanding.