In 1958, when Chana Wilson was seven, her mother held a rifle to her head and pulled the trigger. The gun jammed and she was taken away to a mental hospital. On her return, Chana became the caretaker of her heavily medicated, suicidal mother. It would be many years before she learned the secret of her mother's anguish: her love affair with another married woman, and the psychiatric treatment aimed at curing her of her lesbianism.
“Riding Fury Home” spans forty years of the intense, complex relationship between Chana and her mother—the trauma of their early years together, 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 '50s to the exhilaration of the women's movement of the '70s and beyond, the book traces the profound ways in which their two lives were impacted by the social landscape of their time. Exquisitely written and devastatingly honest, “Riding Fury Home” is a shattering account of one family's struggle against homophobia and mental illness—and a powerful story of healing, forgiveness, and redemption.

Review
“Chana Wilson's astonishing story is a hybrid of nightmare and fairy tale in which every child's worst fears and fondest hopes about their mother come true.”
—Alison Bechdel, author of “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic”

"Chana Wilson has done a wonderful thing—putting on the page so much grief, fear, and stubborn awe-inspiring endurance. We rarely look closely at complicated relationships like the one she had with her mother, and even more rarely look at how they change over time. This is not heroes and villains, but a layered, intimate exchange in which it seems the child is never quite allowed to be a child—and yet still manages to hang onto a carefully constructed loving closeness.
—Dorothy Allison, author of “Bastard Out of Carolina”