Victoria Costello

A Lethal Inheritance, Uncovering Mental Illness Behind Family Secrets
From page one...

Alex by the Dumpster
Where it begins


“How would you describe Alex’s recent behavior?”

The psychiatrist asked me this question with her eyes still peeled to my son’s admission file. While searching for the right words to describe the terrifying changes I’d seen come over Alex during the previous 12 months, I flashed on the afternoon I’d found him hiding among the trash bins behind Fairfax High School. The image made my stomach retch.
“He’s been withdrawn and he has a lot of trouble sleeping,” I said flatly, as if by muting that one awful memory, Alex might not be as crazy as I feared.

Later I found an entry in Alex’s journal, dated October 15, 1997, giving his perspective on the same afternoon.

I sat down behind a dumpster, declared it my kingdom and began drawing soldiers. I drew an angel with eyes and tits. I drew knights to fight my holy war. I began to forget that I was back there cause I was scared of the world.

Alex’s art teacher made a heroic attempt earlier that day to keep him in her class, saying he could draw or paint whatever he wished. At 3:00 when I entered the rear parking lot where I usually pick him up, he was crouched between the dumpster and a cement wall. After the third time I called his name, he stood up and walked slowly to the car. He said the pressure had gotten to him.

Lost Secrets of the Goddess
Breaking the glass ceiling or staying home with the kids, sex positivism versus the new virginity, divorce or covenant marriages, pantsuit or thigh-baring dress, and that always challenging quandary for those still wearing skirts: panty hose or bare legs?

For women, no kidding, these are the issues of our time. Or are they?

Have you ever wondered what Mary Magdalene would say to the woman struggling with the men at work who just won't listen when she speaks up at staff meetings? For that matter, what answers would the other ancient priestesses, Goddesses, mystics, queens and healers have for today's confused woman on the five really big questions that underlie all the others in her life.

1. How can I realize my inner and outer beauty as a woman?
2. How can I find love and sexual fulfillment?
3. How can I be good mother without losing my self or my sanity?
4. How can I become a powerful leader and not sacrifice my femininity?
5. Where can I find a woman-friendly path to the divine?

These five essential questions are introduced in each chapter through personal quotes drawn from the author’s interviews with real women who are representative of the book’s target demographic of 30 to 60 year old, married and single, mothers and working women, red and blue states in the U.S. many of whom are spiritual seekers, and some of their U.K. counterparts.

Answers to the questions they pose then come from some of the most fascinating women who’ve ever lived in history or in our imaginations: Goddesses, iconic female royals and favorite girl and woman characters of old.

LOVE BETWEEN MORTALS, a novel
LOVE BETWEEN MORTALS is set in San Francisco where Claire lives with Michael and teaches Chaucer, and in London where she takes part in Chaucerian gatherings and secretly sees Alfie. The time period is 2004-2006, a time of revolution around marriage, particularly who shall be given the right to marry whom. In this cauldron of opposing campaigns for and against same sex marriage, court rulings, referenda and wall-to-wall weddings, LOVE BETWEEN MORTALS posits that no relationship is safe from rampant confusion about the true meaning of committed love.