Indie Book Award For Shot in the Head A Sister's Memoir, A Brother's Struggle

WESTCHESTER COUNTY, N.Y. - Sept. 29, 2014 - PRLog -- When her mentally ill brother developed lung cancer, author Katherine Flannery Dering had to overcome her reluctance to deal with the troubled man and step up to help in his care. While maneuvering through the maze of our mental health system, she (and her eight siblings) got to know social workers and the employees of nursing homes on a first name basis, saw friends and family less often, missed work, and ate fewer meals at home and more fast food.  Along the way, she changed in unforeseen ways, and her perception of her ill brother, Paul, changed as well.

The readers of this book will also be changed.

One of the criteria for for being named Indie book of the day is that the book must have a minimum rating of 4 stars on Amazon.com & a minimum of 5 user reviews across all platforms combined. In fact, Shot in the Head has an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars from 15 reviews on Amazon. These reviews have comments such as:

"Beautifully written book"

"Start reading. laugh. cry. laugh. cry. repeat until the end"

"Courageous story of a family's love and care for a brother transformed by mental illness"

"Wonderful"

"Memorable and Honest Memoir"

"Couldn't put this down!"

The book also has an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars from 16 ratings and 11 reviews on Goodreads. One of the Goodreads comments stated:

"Beautiful memoir about the effects of mental illness on a family. Dering includes her poetry throughout the memoir that really captures her raw emotion. It is a real life "I know this much is true" by Wally Lamb."

Shot in the Head also received a highly favorable review in the New York Journal of Books which called it an "enlightening and educational work!" and very impressive advance reviews.  Elizabeth Eslami author of Bone Worship and Hibernate and the 2013 winner of the Ohio State University Prize in Short Fiction said that Shot in the Head is "Both universal and personal, Katherine Dering's Shot in the Head is the story of a family just barely holding on. Dering unspools her story with urgent compassion and grace."

Ann Cloonan, Director, Bedford Free Library, Bedford, NY said "So powerful and emotional".

Katherine Flannery Dering holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Manhattanville College. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Inkwell Magazine, as well as The Bedford Record Review, Northwords Press, Sensations Magazine, Pandaloon Press, Poetry Motel and Pink Elephant Magazine. A narrative non-fiction piece, which later became a chapter of Shot in the Head, was included in Stories from the Couch, an anthology of essays about coping with mental illness.

Earlier in her career, Ms Flannery Dering earned an MA in Spanish Literature from SUNY Buffalo, where she was an instructor of Spanish. She also holds an MBA from the University of Minnesota. After a 25 year career in business, she is the retired chief financial officer of Provident Bank, a large community bank in Rockland County, New York. She now serves on the board of directors of The Westchester Bank, in Yonkers, New York.

Shot in the Head A Sister's Memoir, A Brother's Struggle is available as an e-book from Amazon in Kindle as well as e-book versions for Kobo, Nook, Google Play Store and Apple. It is also available in print from Amazon and other retailers. The print book is distributed by Ingram, ISBN 978-1-927637-21-0, 227 pages, 19.95.

Readers' experience of the book can be enhanced by visiting the book's website at http://www.shotintheheadbook.com/home.html and by joining in the discussion about efforts to deal with serious mental illness on the book's Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Shot-in-the-Head-A-Sisters...