Medical, Domestic Life, Mothers & Children, African American, Psychological, Literary, Family Life 

Bebe Moore Campbell attacks the American mental health system for failing to support people with serious mental illness due to a shortage of psychiatric hospital beds and a reluctance to force treatment onto patients. The novel follows Keri, a secondhand clothing shop owner in Los Angeles, as she struggles to get mental health treatment for her daughter, Trina, who has bipolar disorder. At home, Trina abuses marijuana, rages in her bedroom, and refuses to take her medications, but Keri cannot place her in a hospital to stabilize her over the long term because the hospitals keep releasing her after a seventy-two hour hold. About halfway through the book, after this pattern has repeated itself multiple times, Keri joins up with a group of rogue mental health workers who do whatever it takes to hold their patients long enough to help them recover. The novel also explores other aspects of Keri’s life – her store, her employees’ problems, her ex-boyfriend and ex-husband, her support group, and her alcoholic mother. It asks some interesting questions about patients’ rights, racial and economic disparities in mental healthcare access, and how much power we have as humans to change ourselves.