THIS IS THE STORY OF ELVIS PRESLEY'S DAUGHTER, told by herself and her own daughter. Lisa Marie passed away before the manuscript could be finished, leaving gaps that Riley later filled with her own chapters, woven in. The result is a duet echoing from beyond the grave, or rather, From Here to The Great Unknown.
It's a story that perfectly illustrates how different the world was before the Internet (which imo not only brought the Me Too movement, but also, mental health awareness), where the norm was to "suck it up and keep it hush hush", until the pain screwed you up, screwed up your children, and became this big unstoppable wheel of hurt and secrets.
It's also the story of a mother's quest —Lisa Marie’s — to stop that wheel.
When I tell people my stories, they tell me I'm strong. But that makes me crazy because I think, What's it for, though? Throw stuff at me and I'll get through it, but for what? What does the strength matter? It doesn't matter to me.
It's incredibly moving, raw, and sincere. It sometimes feels disarmingly honest, even childlike. Both the Lisa Marie chapters and the Riley chapters had me thinking: That’s a little too much information to share and just trust that the public won’t judge you, or stalk you even more.
There’s almost a kind of quaint Christian naiveté to it: of being too trusting of the goodwill of strangers, of always telling the truth, because it's the right thing to do. And it is that very innocence that gives you the sense of how ordinary this family is. How very close they were of being complete nobodies, had it not been for Elvis's and Pricilla's chance encounter.
Lisa Marie fought a tornado that was headed her way long before she was born. And fought it valiantly she did. No, if it were me, I wouldn't want to be Elvis Presley-famous. •
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