Imperfect Endings: A Daughter's Tale of Life and Death »

Zoe FitzGerald Carter is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School and has written for numerous publications including New York magazine, The New York Observer, Premiere, and various national magazines. Imperfect Endings is her first memoir. It won first place in the 2008 Pacific Northwest Writer's Association's literary contest and was a finalist at The San Francisco Writer's Conference. Zoe lives in Northern California with her husband and two daughters.

Zoe Carter's busy life on the West Coast with her husband and daughters takes an unexpected detour when her glamorous, independent-minded mother, Margaret, decides she wants to "end things." Tired of living with Parkinson's disease, Margaret declares she is no longer willing to go where the illness is taking her. Unsure how -- or when -- she will end her life, she is certain of one thing: she wants her three daughters there when she does it.

Stunned by the prospect of losing her mother and concerned about the legal ramifications of participating in her suicide, Zoe does what she can to convince her mother to abandon her plans. But for nearly a year, Margaret will talk of nothing else. Calling Zoe at random times of the day, she blithely asks which would be better: overdosing on morphine or Seconal? Getting help from the Hemlock Society or doing it on her own? And when would be a good time -- February or May? Or how about June?

Shuttling between her family in California and her mother's house in Washington, D.C., Zoe finds herself increasingly drawn into her mother's "exit plans." She helps Margaret procure a lethal dose of drugs from a local psychiatrist and endures a bizarrely funny encounter with Bud, the Hemlock Society's "Caring Friend" who seems a little too eager to help Margaret kill herself.

Anxious to maintain her role as "the good daughter," Zoe finds herself in conflict with her older sisters, both of whom have difficult histories with their mother. As the three women negotiate over whether or not they should support Margaret's choice and who should be there at the end, their discussions stir up old alliances and animosities, along with memories of a childhood dominated by their elegant mother and philandering father.

Capturing the stresses and the joys of the "sandwich generation" while bringing a provocative new perspective to the assisted suicide debate, Imperfect Endings is the uplifting story of a woman determined to die on her own terms and the family who has to learn to let her go.

Publishers Weekly

A deceptively cheery tale about her mother’s plans to end her own life underscores the author’s conflicted role in filial caring and responsibility. Carter’s mother, a widow living in Washington, D.C., had suffered from Parkinson’s disease for more than 20 years, and by 2001 had grown debilitated and depressed about her physical helplessness; she had joined the Hemlock Society and was actively making plans to kill herself, to the consternation of her three daughters. Carter, who is the youngest of the sisters, living in San Francisco with her husband and two small children, seemed the closest emotionally to her mother, and flew back and forth to accommodate her erratic schedule at “ending things.” Armed with a lethal supply of Seconal and morphine, the mother nevertheless vacillated about what to do, as her daughters (and their partners) debated the effectiveness and legal ramifications of her assisted suicide, even suggesting she was being manipulative and controlling. Although there are poignant memories of childhood and early family life, this memoir perhaps unavoidably dwells on the author’s needs and wishes, rather than the mother’s. In the end, the family rallied around her painful decision, and though Carter attempts to preserve her mother’s dying dignity, her account frequently jars, with its grimly glib celebratory tone. (Mar.)