Saving Ellen

A coming-of-age memoir that follows a large, working-class Irish family as it plunges into chaos in the wake of a terminal diagnosis—and the author's own hidden struggle to  endure  when her sister's disease becomes the dark star around which they all revolve. Financial privation and her father’s drunken scenes formed the backdrop to Maura Casey's childhood, but her sister Ellen’s years-long struggle with kidney disease consumed her whole family. Determined to see Ellen live to adultho