Terry

April 29, 1996
The former Democratic senator from South Dakota here presents a memorial service for his alcoholic daughter, Terry, who froze to death on the streets of Madison, Wisc., one pre-Christmas night in 1994. Other such books have been more felicitously written but few as heart-wrenchingly, as we hear about Terry's troubled life from her family (three sisters and a brother who is a recovering alcoholic), friends, doctors and police. The onetime presidential candidate's daughter began drinking at 13; at 15 she had an abortion, arranged by her father although the procedure was then illegal. Terry, who continued drinking, was arrested for possessing pot in 1968, a charge carrying a mandatory five-year sentence she beat (thanks to her father's lawyers) on a technicality involving the search warrant. She left college to spend more than four years in daily psychoanalysis following six months in a locked psychiatric ward. Although as one doctor noted, Terry was "an awfully tough case,'' in 1980, when she was 31, her life seemed salvageable; at that time she embarked on what proved to be eight years of sobriety, during which she and her lover had two daughters. But her drinking, despite countless treatment programs, at private facilities and AA, would ultimately kill her. Her father, who discusses the high incidence of alcoholism among his forbears and has now dedicated himself to the cause, considers Terry's a possible genetic condition. His anguish is potent. Author tour.

January 1, 1996
Ex-U.S. senator McGovern tells of his daughter's tragic battle with alcoholism.

September 1, 1996
YA-Terry McGovern was found frozen to death in a snow bank in Madison, WI, just before Christmas in 1994. She died not because she was unloved or unsupported, but because she was unable to stop drinking. The author, a former senator and one-time candidate for president, wonders whether he could have loved his middle child more or shown greater support during her 20- year battle with the bottle. He searches through the journals she kept for most of her adult life; speaks with friends, counselors, and other alcoholics; consults with members of his family; and tries to understand where they all went wrong. The result is a heartrending, painful account of the day-to-day, year-to-year struggle Terry faced in dealing with her "demon," and the conclusion that this disease is unremittingly unyielding to logic or love. The book reveals much about both alcoholism and the family dynamics so often associated with the time and energy put into "curing" the alcoholic. So many people are directly and indirectly affected by the disease that any open discussion of its cause and treatment is valuable, and the story of its impact on this high-profile and basically good family shows the democratic nature of its incidence.-Susan H. Woodcock, Kings Park Library, Burke, VA

April 1, 1996
In December 1994, Madison, Wisconsin, police found the body of 45-year-old Teresa McGovern--middle child of former presidential candidate and South Dakota senator McGovern and his wife, Eleanor--in the snow. Terry's death devastated her family, but it was not entirely shocking, for she had struggled with alcohol for 25 years. Like her brother Steve, a recovering alcoholic, Terry had inherited vulnerability to alcohol from her father's family and depression from her mother's. She experimented with alcohol from age 13 (and used pot and LSD during high school) and was first hospitalized for treatment before she turned 20. Sober through most of her 30s, Terry fell in love and gave birth to two daughters she cherished, but the old demons returned: her daughters went to live with their father, and Terry spent her last year shifting in and out of detox programs. AA's 12-step approach certainly helped Terry, but McGovern regrets the distance he and Eleanor kept, on the advice of professionals ("Don't enable" ), in Terry's final months, insisting that "there is no such thing as too much compassion, understanding, support and love for the sick and dying. Alcoholics are sick unto death. They won't make it through the night without our love and protection--and sometimes our repeated direct intervention." Drawing on diaries and family members' comments as well as his own memories, McGovern's "Terry" is a moving portrait of a troubled woman and a compelling exploration of a disease that affects 20 million U.S. families. ((Reviewed April 1, 1996))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1996, American Library Association.)