Diary of a Stage Mothers Daughter

the long version

When Melissa Francis was eight, she won the role of a lifetime: Cassandra Cooper Ingalls, the little girl who was adopted by the Ingalls family on the prime-time soap opera, Little House on the Prairie. Despite her age, she was already a veteran actress, moving from one Hollywood set to the next. But behind the scenes, her success was fueled by the pride, pressure, and sometimes grinding cruelty of her stage mother. While Melissa thrived under pressure, her older sister Tiffany--who had tried acting but shrank from the limelight--was often ignored by their mother in a shadow of neglect and disappointment. But it wasn't until after Melissa had graduated from Harvard, found love and married that Tiffany's personal problems culminated in a life-and-death crisis. When Melissa realized the role her mother continued to play in her sister's downward spiral, she resolved to end the manic, abusive cycle once and for all. This is a disquieting tale of a family under the care of a highly neurotic, dangerously competitive "tiger mother."--From publisher description.