Saving Ellen

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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 adulthood, her mother fought medical advice to donate a kidney at a time when organ transplants were medical miracles. She concealed the true impact of that decision, which would affect the family for years to come. Set in Buffalo amidst the tumult of the 1960s and 70s, Saving Ellen traces the author's recovery from alcoholism and sexual assault and tells of her irrepressible older sister Ellen, who fought to claim her dream of becoming an athlete; her smart, feminist