Raised by a drug-addicted mother and criminal stepfather, she became her younger sisters’ only hope—and the rock that held her family together. Now, high school senior Angel Ferente is nowhere to be found. Last seen on public transit in the middle of the night, the talented competitive swimmer with an independent streak could have ended up just about anywhere. But on the rough streets of Philadelphia, in a community plagued by drugs and violent crime, her family and friends are finding plenty of cause for concern. Narrated by Angel’s troubled younger sister Jeannine and her swim teammate Alex, Watermark explores the challenges of growing up in the inner city in the midst of the crack epidemic and how one girl found refuge in the act of swimming and the steadfast support of her team. Alex and Jeannine form a bond as they find ways to cope with Angel’s absence. The swim team and members of a struggling community come together in search of the missing teen—will they manage to figure out where she has gone and track Angel down alive?

Watermark

Literature & Fiction

Schiller, Elise

Genre Fiction

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

In January 2014, Elise Schiller’s youngest child, thirty-three-year-old Giana Natali, died of a heroin overdose while a resident in a treatment program in Boulder County, Colorado. Even if Your Heart Would Listen is about Giana’s life, which was full of accomplishments, and her mental illness, addiction, and death. Using excerpts from the journals, planners, and letters Giana left behind, as well as evidence from her medical records, Schiller dissects her daughter’s treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) at the five residential and several outpatient programs in eastern Pennsylvania where she tried to recover, taking a close look at the lack of continuity and solid medical foundations in the American substance-use treatment system even as she explores the deeply personal experience of her own loss. Poignant and timely, Even if Your Heart Would Listen is a meditation on a family’s grief, an intimate portrayal of a mother-daughter bond that endures, and an examination of how our nation is failing in its struggle with the opioid epidemic.

Even if Your Heart Would Listen: Losing My Daughter to Heroin

Parenting & Relationships

SparkPress

The oldest child in a troubled Philadelphia family, Angel Ferente struggles to care for her three sisters while pursuing her goal of attending college on a swimming scholarship. She has a problematic relationship with her mother, Pic, who uses alcohol and drugs to self-medicate and at one point lost custody for a year, and an outright hostile relationship with her stepfather, the only father figure in her life. Angel is the center of stability in the household―making sure the younger girls get to school, ensuring that holidays are observed, doing the family’s laundry at her part-time job at a Laundromat, and even taking care of Pic when she is sick or depressed. It’s 1993, the midst of the crack epidemic, and Angel and her sisters are witness to the everyday events of life in a community beset by poverty and drugs: dealers on the corner, shoot-outs that kill bystanders, prostitutes on the job, and more. Then Angel goes to a team party on New Year’s Eve―and doesn’t come home afterward. In the wake of her disappearance, her teammates, her coach’s church, and her family search the city for her. The result changes their lives forever.

Watermark: The Broken Bell series

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Schiller, Elise. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Schiller, Elise

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Schiller, Elise. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Watermark

Even if Your Heart Would Listen: Losing My Daughter to Heroin

Watermark: The Broken Bell series