A heartbreaking true story of three small girls who find the imaginative strength to survive their mother's slow spiral into schizophrenia. When Laura Flynn was a little girl her beautiful, dynamic mother was the center of her imagination--Sally Flynn engaged her three girls in rounds of elaborate games and felt great maternal joy at their smallest accomplishments. It wasn't long, however, before Sally's fun-loving side became slowly but methodically absorbed by bits of madness. Whether it was accusing Laura's father of trying to win her over to the side of Satan, or buying only certain products that were evil-free, glimmers of her mother's future paranoia grew brighter as Laura's early years passed. But once her father left the family and filed for divorce, these symptoms bloomed in earnest, and the three girls united in flights of fancy of the sort their mother taught them in order to shut out the dangerous goings on in their house. Set in 1970s San Francisco, Swallow the Ocean is redolent with place. Drawn with luminous prose, this memoir paints a most intimate portrait of what might have been a catastrophic childhood had Laura and her sisters not been resilient and determined enough to survive their environment even as they yearned to escape it.