Notes After Midnight

How I Outlasted My Teenagers, One Mistake at a Time. In this haunting memoir, Carol Richmond relives the ten-year experience of raising three children on her own after her ex-husband abandons his paternal responsibilities. One of her sons attempts suicide, the other fails academically, and her daughter is sexually abused by a trusted acquaintance—yet the family endures, because they must. When thirty-five-year-old Carol Richmond decides to end her seventeen-year marriage, she has no idea what’s in store. Within the first year of the divorce, her ex-husband abandons his children and ignores the court’s orders to pay child support, and despite working sixteen hours a day and seven days a week, Richmond cannot make ends meet. She is forced to sell her home and hawk her jewelry in order to keep her family fed and housed, and more often than not she relies on hired women to kiss her children goodnight and dry their tears.In the decade to follow, Carol’s growing children struggle with individual complexities. One son attempts suicide; another utterly fails academically; and her daughter is sexually abused by a trusted acquaintance. Yet Carol and her children endure—because they must.Haunting yet full of humor and self-effacing wisdom, Notes After Midnight is a story of the invisible binding thread connecting each of us to one another—the thread that helps us find our way along even the most difficult of paths.