“Ain’t nothing breaks up families like somebody publishing their memoirs,” said Will Rogers. True enough. But then along comes someone like Laura Flynn, who uses her new memoir as a way to put things back together.

Upon returning to her native San Francisco after doing humanitarian work in Haiti in the late ’90s, Flynn found herself surrounded by memories of a 1970s childhood filled with all the normal stuff—laughter, mischief and plaid pants—as well as something not-so-normal: a mentally ill mother. She had expected to write a book about her time in Haiti, but found herself instead drawn to the memories of her sometimes-sordid childhood.

Released last year to critical acclaim, Swallow the Ocean revolves around Flynn’s mother, Sally, whose gradual slip into paranoid schizophrenia frayed the family at every end and ended up costing her custody of her three young daughters. It’s beautifully written and heartbreaking. Flynn takes tremendous care with the writing, which she honed during her time as an MFA student in the University of Minnesota’s creative writing program. The book, which took her six years to complete, was her thesis. “I needed more time to get it as good as I wanted it to be,” she says. “There was the craft of it. And then there was the emotional coming-to-terms with it all.”

Now a mother herself to 6-month-old twins, Flynn manages to pull her early life story off with the most delicate balance of revelation and respect. “I didn’t want it to come out of an angry place,” she says. “There’s a deep sadness over [my mother’s] life. Writing this was a way to mark her life, because she doesn’t have a life, holds no identification. It’s a way for me to honor her.”

Swallow the Ocean will hit shelves in paperback next month.