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Keri Whitmore is a desperate mother. She's having a good day when Bebe Moore Campbell's novel, 72 HOUR HOLD, opens, but it doesn't last. Keri wants only what she used to have --- a healthy teenage daughter who's headed off to a prestigious university in the fall. Instead, her beautiful little girl has been transformed by mental illness and both their dreams seem doomed to the realm of the impossible.
Trina, Keri's little girl, has bipolar disorder, and when we meet Keri, she has already struggled to find out what is wrong with her daughter. After witnessing her bizarre behavior and being the object of Trina's abuse, Keri got her medical help and learned about the disease. Trina seems to be all right for a while, as she takes the medication that helps keep her behavior under control.
Then Keri begins to see odd behavior again and the situation escalates, with Trina using drugs and becoming violent. Her mother struggles to get her back on track and into a hospital on a 72-hour hold. Everything has become more difficult because Trina has just turned 18 and is an adult. So Keri has to navigate the system and convince officials that Trina is a danger to herself or to others in order to have her confined. And she struggles to convince herself that having her daughter confined is the best thing to do.
Whether it's the best route or not, every 72-hour hold has to end. And though Trina plays the role of compliant patient for the medical staff, she isn't fine at all. Keri feels enslaved by the illness and envisions their struggle as metaphorically similar to slaves on a plantation, at the mercy of the master brain disease and Trina's behavior, or the system.
She needs an escape route that will get her fugitive daughter to the safe harbor of mental and emotional stability. Keri finds the path to an alternative source of treatment and makes the difficult decision to follow it because of her desperation. She risks further alienating Trina and endangering both their lives in order to get to the promised land of mental health.
Campbell, who has spoken and written about dealing with mental illness in her own family, has written what easily could be dismissed as an issue-laden novel. Her skill as a novelist is in making Keri's story compelling and developing a plot that provides a view of the daunting tasks families face when dealing with brain disease. Keri and Trina's journey draws the reader in and is a beautifully written window into a mother's world. The book is a fictional memoir of Keri's life as a parent --- and what she gives up to continue being the mother Trina needs. Campbell's life experience clearly informs the story and gives it an authenticity that makes the heartbreak and healing that much more poignant.
--- Reviewed by Bernadette Davis
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