I met her at a mental health conference.
She grabbed me following my talk, and in words both passionate and disjointed, shared a story of life with DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder. Two hours later I saw her again … the same her on the outside. Yet, in her mind, a different personality had taken over.
She didn’t know who I was.
This teen had the same desires I had. To love, to be loved. But how would a young adult with DID relate to a member of the opposite sex? What would it be like to hold secrets from your other self?
In Both of Me, Clara knows all too well. She doesn’t have DID, but she’s a Londoner on the run from her own tragedy, the “Great Undoing,” a reality she can’t bear to face. She meets Elias Phinn on the red-eye from New York to Minneapolis, and senses his uniqueness. When their bags are switched and she follows him to right the error, Clara is plunged into the unpredictable world of Elias’s mental illness, and discovers the mythical country of Salem that one of his two personalities has created. This “other” Elias knows too much about Clara’s painful past. Soon the pair embarks on an Alice-in-Wonderland road-trip. Torn between the desire to uncover what Elias knows, and the growing need to aid Elias in his own search to become whole, Clara looses her footing, and travels with Elias over the murky roads of Salem. Reality blurs, but one thing is clear…
All of her has fallen for half of him.
Both of Me will challenge your readers’ idea of “normal,” as the “three” of them follow the stars toward a discovery in Maine that will leave you breathless.
We all fall into fictional worlds. We flee there when the “real” overwhelms. Spend some time with Elias in Salem, and you’ll never view mental illness the same.
Both of Me