REVIEWS AND PRAISE FOR THE BOOK

“… deeply personal memoir… LaPera brings to life the raw emotions and challenges of searching for a loved one lost to mental illness with extraordinary grace and honesty…. an essential read for anyone seeking to understand the impact of severe mental illness on families and the power of persistent love, and I would certainly recommend it.”

—K.C. Finn for Readers’ Favorite (Five-Star Review)

“… compelling memoir especially highly recommended for readers facing their own impossible family journeys … replete with insights and progressive discoveries… will especially resonate with readers struggling with their own family member’s mental condition… Knowing her father’s fate is only half the battle.”

—D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

FINDING DAD, Paranoid Schizophrenia: An End to the Search by Amanda LaPera

Living on the streets with untreated severe mental illness that developed at the age of fifty-three, Joseph was all but forgotten by the world. His daughter, Amanda, had searched for years and still hoped to find him--she'd even registered her father in the National Database of Missing Persons. Her sister, brother, and stepmother had all given up or moved on. 

Ten years have passed when a call from the Missing Persons division alerts Amanda that her dad is alive, though his location is unknown. Is he back in Chicago or in one of the thirty countries he’d roamed as a self-proclaimed Prophet of God? 

Amanda's mission is clear: find him. Her motivation: unconditional love. She navigates a maze of medical bureaucracy and a tangle of relationships to discover that what she's been searching for is not all that she finds.

Finding Dad, Paranoid Schizophrenia: An End to the Search is the highly-anticipated sequel to Losing Dad, Paranoid Schizophrenia: A Family's Search for Hope, but is perfectly fine read on its own. Book club discussion questions included.