The Year of Rejection

By Hope Mills

A new voice debuts with an unflinchingly honest memoir: the story of a desperate return to the self after decades of depression.

Dove Mills is an immigrant overachiever until an unexpected eviction leaves her homeless. She descends into psychosis for the next year, bleeding depression onto the corners of her sociology textbooks. Dove digs into atypical anorexia and avoidant attachment, deflating her passions into passive suicide. But it didn't start with the eviction.

Dove is twelve years old when she moves from Ireland to Lithuania. In one swoop, she loses her father, brother and Catholic schoolgirl identity, landing in a town of 900 people where everyone knows her name. She battles a generational, cultural and language barrier at home and at school, quickly collapsing into a hostile teenager. On this shaky foundation, Dove attempts suicide twice in six years. But when she graduates, she returns to Ireland to begin her life. By her third year of college, Dove seems to have everything figured out-- until her new world crumbles beneath her feet.

The Year of Rejection steps into the world of growing up first-generation Lithuanian-Irish in an environment which dismisses mental illness. Through prose and psychoanalysis, Dove Mills tells the story of 2022, the worst year of her life, and how she returned to herself.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0DLP46YBK
• ISBN13: 9798343773699
• Release Date: October 2024
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 76 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"