2014 Golden Quill Award
2014 Kindle Book Award semifinalist
A mother and son's determination to overcome serious mental illness. Writing in tandem, they tell their story of struggle, heartbreak, and recovery.
"Novelist Kathy Brandt and her son, Max, take readers on a terrifying journey through our nation’s broken, overwhelmed, underfunded, and frustrating mental healthcare system. Walks On The Margins will make you angry. It will make you cry. It will also inspire you! Ultimately, it is testament to the unconditional love of a parent and a son’s determination to overcome a serious mental illness. Writing in tandem, they have not only told their personal story, but have told the story of thousands of other American families who are everyday heroes -- and they have told it extremely well."-- Pete Earley, author of CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness.
"It is a heart-breaking, heart-warming story. The entire family rides a rollercoaster of illusions, fear, anger and hope, while navigating a fragmented mental health care system. Do you want to know what it’s like for a family to confront mental illness? Read this book. It’s the real deal". --Michael J. Fitzpatrick, Executive Director, National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
Excerpt
Chapter 1
The Electric Blue Hour
Max
Fine chocolates and white wine, little soaps and body powders wrapped in satin yellow bows, a diamond accented with emeralds on a band of white gold. The Love Park fountain bursting through the city lights. A childish quartet splashing in the baby blue, exhilarated by the coming of the hour. The air was for once fresh, the flags of the avenue full as sails with the warmth of summer. Sisters of hers, brothers of mine, drifted by, the priest, the promenade.
The scene was fleeting, emptying, disappearing. She never came, and where I thought my walk had ended, it had only just begun. And so I stood, twisting precious gems around my little finger, and to my fair lady I heeded the sign. The flier on the telephone pole, in the newspaper box, the ad on the side of the bus. The arrangement of flowers in the store window, the stray cat,the draw of the cicada’s pulse, he charms that fell from her bracelet.
Bent over like a real beggar, smelling like fungus and urine, I walked on the same blisters, only bigger. Gruesome,unnerving, crimson silver dollars on my Achilles heel, medallions on my walks over the horizon, marathons on the margins. On the fissures in the bricks of the lovesick, in the storm that would right everything wrong, it was for her, my paradise.
She was the promise, the one that could never be made good. But a promise so great that its very mirage crippled even the strongest of wills. If I finally do recover, it will be from her; it will be from a broken heart.
But let me start from the beginning, nearly 12 years ago now.
Professional Reviews
It will make you angry. It will make you cry. It will Inspire You!
Novelist Kathy Brandt and her son, Max, take readers on a terrifying journey through our nation’s broken, overwhelmed, underfunded, and frustrating mental health care system. Walks On The Margins will make you angry. It will make you cry. It will also inspire you! Ultimately, it is testament to the unconditional love of a parent and a son’s determination to overcome a serious mental illness. Writing in tandem, they have not only told their personal story, but have told the story of thousands of other American families who are everyday heroes -- and they have told it extremely well. Pete Earley, author of CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness.
Heartbreaking. Heartwarming
Alternating chapters in this eloquent memoir present the competing perspectives of Kathy Brandt and her college-age son, Max, who struggles with bipolar disorder. It is a heart-breaking, heart-warming story. The entire family rides a rollercoaster of illusions, fear, anger and hope, while navigating a fragmented mental health care system. Do you want to know what it’s like for a family to confront mental illness? Read this book. It’s the real deal. --Michael J. Fitzpatrick, Executive Director, National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
Brilliant! Heartfelt! Powerful!
I've read quite a few memoirs about family difficulties coping with mental illness. I'm astonished when one is written or co-written by the diagnosed family member. Authors Kathy (Mom) and Max (son with a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder) have given us a visceral, honest, and moving picture of how parents, friends and the system help or hurt someone suffering with what is more lay-friendly described as Manic Depression. We aren't talking about Max being diagnosed early and medicated properly and then skimming smoothly through adulthood. On the contrary, we see the inside of mental institutions, psychiatric offices, and onto the streets and Max's life sometimes under bridges.
Max's sometimes painful and sometimes heart-racing high moments are contrasted, every other chapter, with Kathy's more stable, lucid, smooth take from an outside-but-close perspective. Kathy's chapters are moving and further evidence of her place in the full-length book world; she is a skilled and successful novelist in her own right. But previously unpublished Max is a surprise talent with a voice that is unique and powerfully engaging. I was mesmerized throughout. Read this book. You'll get an education as you wallow in its lyricism and the love between the two authors. It is brilliant.
For a time, I perched myself on a flat rock, comparing my life with the Guyandotte River. Just as its tributaries replenish it daily, changing it in some small—sometimes great—degree, so have the day-to-day occurrences of life changed me. Like the ri
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