My elderly, mentally ill mother, her incapacity blinding her to the fact of it, refused the help she didn't know she needed. Given the chance to force it on her in the most brutal way possible, I lunged, hungrier to savage her than to save her. It was an appalling moment for this seemingly classic Good Girl: Was I, like my mother, a monster in disguise? Savage Good Girl is a story of discovery as I trace the roads to and from that moment. It is also a story of redemption: despite all that had come before—my mother’s derelictions, my rage—I found within me a molten core of love and compassion for the parent I once loathed. Woven through the narrative is the tale of the successful, lovable father who, almost unnoticed, let the entire family down through his own shortcomings, and needed rescue too.