The Glass Castle meets The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother in this dazzlingly honest and provocative family memoir by former child actress and current Fox Business Network anchor Melissa Francis.
When Melissa Francis was eight years old, she won the role of lifetime: playing Cassandra Cooper Ingalls, the little girl who was adopted with her brother (played by young Jason Bateman) by the Ingalls family on the worldβs most famous primetime soap opera, Little House on the Prairie. Despite her age, she was already a veteran actress, living a charmed life, moving from one Hollywood set to the next. But behind the scenes, her success was fueled by the pride, pressure, and sometimes grinding cruelty of her stage mother, as fame and a motherβs ambition pushed her older sister deeper into the shadows.
Diary of a Stage Motherβs Daughter is a fascinating account of life as a child star in the 1980βs, and also a startling tale of a family under the care of a highly neurotic, dangerously competitive βtiger mother.β But perhaps most importantly, now that Melissa has two sons of her own, itβs a meditation on motherhood, and the value of pushing your children: how hard should you push a child to succeed, and at what point does your help turn into harm?
Review
**Hoda Kotb, author of Hoda: How I Survived War Zones, Bad Hair, Cancer, and Kathie Lee , and co-host of the Today show
**βI am always in search of the book I canβt put down. Well, thanks to Melissa Francis, I FOUND it. I may have missed a few nights sleep, but I am so much better for it. Her book is captivating, revealing and ultimately healing. Who knew the kid from Little House on the Prairie had such a fascinating real-life story? I am in awe.β
**Kirkus Review
** "Chilling memoir by a Fox Business Network anchor and child star chronicles the misery of growing up with a cruel, controlling and abusive stage mother. Francis' narrative grabs readers immediately. One of those intimate, heartbreaking, doubled-edged stories that is hard to read, impossible to put down."
_Publisher's Weekly
_ "Compelling...A thoughtful trek across a troubled family landscape resulting in a bittersweet yet hopeful final act."
About the Author
A graduate of Harvard University, Melissa Francis grew up in Southern California where she acted in numerous national television commercials, feature-length films, television movies and television series, including Little House on the Prairie. As a broadcast journalist, she has anchored and reported for CNBC, made regular appearances on the Today show, and currently hosts two daily business shows on the Fox Business Network. She lives in New York City with her husband and their two sons.