Daughter of the Queen of Sheba: A Memoir

This account of growing up with a mentally ill mother "belongs on a shelf of classic memoirs, alongside The Liars' Club and Angela's Ashes" (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times).

As an NPR correspondent, Jacki Lyden visited some dangerous war zones—but her childhood was a war zone of a different kind.

Lyden's mother suffered from what is now called bipolar disorder or manic depression. But in a small Wisconsin town in the sixties and seventies she was simply "crazy." In her delusions, L...