Published: 2024
Series: NA
Genres: autobiography, memoir, nonfiction
Grade Levels: 10, 11, 12, Adult
Content Warnings: death, grief, suicide, addiction, mental health, public scrutiny/fame
Goodreads Link: From Here to the Great Unknown
Publisher’s Summary:
“In 2022, Lisa Marie Presley asked her daughter to help finally finish her long gestating memoir. A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words, never know the passionate, joyful, caring, and complicated woman that Riley loved and grieved. Riley got the tapes that her mother had recorded for the book, laid in her bed, and listened as Lisa Marie told story after story about smashing golf carts together in the yards of Graceland, about the unconditional love she felt from her father, about being upstairs, just the two of them. About getting dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran towards his body on the floor. About living in Los Angeles with her mother, getting sent to school after school, always kicked out, always in trouble. About her singular, lifelong relationship with Danny Keough, about being married to Michael Jackson, what they shared in common. About motherhood. About deep addiction. About ever present grief. Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother’s wish to reveal these memories, incandescent and painful, to the world. To make her mother known. This extraordinary book is written in both Lisa Marie’s and Riley’s voices, a mother and daughter communicating, from this world to the one beyond, as they try to heal each other. Profoundly moving and deeply revealing, From Here to the Great Unknown is a book like no other, the last words of the only child of an American icon.”
Review:
Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of the famous Musician Elvis writes a memoir with the assistance of her daughter Riley Keough. Read about her life growing up as the daughter of the King of Rock and Roll, the heavy loss of losing her father at a young age and the struggles and golden moments of her life. Presley has a unique way of pulling her reader in so that they can feel her words. A book you will learn so much more than expected.
Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of the famous musician Elvis Presley writes a memoir with the help of her daughter Riley. Lisa Marie recounts growing up as the daughter of Elvis and her relationship with her mother. She lost her father at only 9 years old, but that left her in such heartbreak for the rest of her life. The way she reflects on the love and loss between a daughter and father will leave you in tears. She opens up about addiction that she struggled with throughout her life and the detrimental effects it had on her life at different stages. She talks about her relationships and four marriages, two to popular celebrities, Michael Jackson and Nicholas Cage. Lisa Marie talks about motherhood to her four children. There is a lot of raw authenticity in this book. It truly gives you a deep insight into the life of Lisa Marie Presley. There are times you laugh, find yourself surprised, want to cry and feel the pain and love in her life.
What pulled me to read this book was I wanted to really know what she was going to write about Michael Jackson. Yet, I was so surprised to learn so much about her. I did not realize she was so young when she lost her father, yet that had such an impact on the rest of her life. I am extremely close to my dad and when I read a part where she would go to Graceland and go into his room and lay in his bed to feel close to him, that part really resonated with me. I could feel what that would feel like. I liked how you read from both her and her daughters perspectives. As I read, I did not realize all the relationships she had or how many children she had. When I read she had twins I was shocked. When I read her son took his life three years before she passed, I felt for her. She has experienced so much loss. She is not a professional writer, so the way she wrote was kind of basic and very easy to read and comprehend. That would be my only critique for the book. I thought it was really engaging and she was able to write and reflect in a way to make her readers feel, I love when books do that.
I would recommend this book to others, I have to my friends. I think it has a lot of interesting information, it is engaging and it is a quick read. I felt like I was reading and learning and feeling at the same time. It made me interested in Elvis’s life and I would want to visit Graceland and see this magical place that was so close to Lisa Marie’s heart.
Major themes of this book are love, loss, recovery, addiction, never giving up, Motherhood, family and relationships.
There were a lot of pictures. There are pictures from Lisa Marie’s childhood, places she spoke about and most of the people she mentions. There are recent pictures of her with her children before she passed away.
I think highschoolers would like this book. It is an easy read and written in a way that is easy to comprehend. Especially if their parents or grandparents are Elvis fans, they would like it. The cover is just a picture of Elvis and Lisa Marie when she was a toddler. I think mental health is so prevalent in schools these days, and this book shows struggles with mental health.
You can connect this book to English, Writing, History, Music, Psychology, or Health.
Some activities you could do from this book is have students write a memoir, they could research famous singers and write an essay or research paper, they could even research Elvis. They could research Graceland and write a persuasive essay if they were to sell it. They could create a timeline of events for Lisa Marie. Students could find songs to go along with different events of Lisa Marie’s life. They could listen to Elvis’s songs and either try to find the meaning of them or pick what was their favorite. You could talk about character traits of all the characters and people mentioned in the book. You could have students write a letter to Lisa Marie after big events, reflecting and asking her questions.
