Out Of The Night That Covers Me: A Family Memoir

Family secrets often surface when the loved ones who know the truth have died. In 2015, Kandace DeLain Davis finally tackled a box of memories, inherited from her grandmother fifteen years earlier. What she discovered in a tiny article from a 1976 edition of The Carmi Times set her on a four-year journey to navigate through secrets and try to understand how her mother died when she was six years old. The biggest question haunted her mind during her investigation: Did Kandace's mother commit suicide or did her older half-brother murder their mother? Had Kandace's beloved grandmother who had raised her after she became an orphan lied to her about her mother until her death? In Out of the Night that Covers Me, Davis narrates her trip through her family's history and her investigation into the years, months, weeks, and days leading up to her mother's death. Readers will be introduced to life in Crossville, Illinois, where Davis's grandparents owned a motel and gas station after her grandmother, Faire, did not marry her college sweetheart and surprisingly wed Alvin Stein instead. Davis uses family letters, diary entries, photos, court transcripts, and re-enactments to tell this heart-wrenching story.Once Alvin and Faire had children, including Davis's mom Mary Ellen Klein, Davis tells the story of the day in and day out family life with an abusive, cheating patriarch and Mary Ellen's mental illness and prescription abuse. The author also details her growing up years in a small Midwest Town during the '70s and '80s, raised by the same man who belittled and beat her mother and grandmother. Finally, Davis writes of her life with her wife of twenty-years and her friends as they supported her on her way to the truth of how her mother lived and died. While readers will be on the edge of their seats reading this family saga, they will also understand how love is the key to life and how mental health cannot be ignored.

• | Author: Kandace Davis
• | Publisher: Editor 911 Books
• | Publication Date: Sep 05, 2023
• | Number of Pages: 324 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 1957366168
• | ISBN-13: 9781957366166