There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me

Shields, who documented her postpartum depression in 2006's Down Came the Rain, turns her attention to her mother, Terri. Tough and gregarious, Terri divorced Brooke's father when Brooke was just a baby. The actress grew up feeling inextricably entwined with and responsible for her mother. Terri was offered a baby modeling opportunity for Brooke, and the girl's career subsequently took off, eventually leading to acting roles. It was Brooke's role as a child prostitute in the 1978 Louis Malle film Pretty Baby that garnered Terri a reputation as a single mother who sold her daughter for her own ambition. Brooke wants to set the record straight about that but pulls no punches about her mother's full-blown alcoholism. Terri died young of dementia and this book is in part her daughter's response to her guilt that she never told her mother what she meant to her. Although Terri's alcoholism was an embarrassment and a worry, says Shields, she was her mother and she loved her very much.