From Here to the Great Unknown

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2024

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Chapter 1

Chapters 2-3

Chapters 4-5

Chapters 6-7

Chapters 8-9

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Chapters 2-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 2 Summary: “He’s Gone”

Lisa often saw Elvis “out of it” or “passed out,” and she “always worried about [him] dying” (47). She would notice him “swaying” or falling, particularly “toward the end.” Nevertheless, Elvis’s “whole face lit up” when he saw his daughter, and Lisa didn’t mention her fears to anyone; she “just internalized it all” (48-49).

Lisa’s mother’s family lived in New Jersey, and she remembers going to visit them when she was six or seven. She had just come from Graceland, and her grandparents believed she “needed to be de-brat-icized” and insisted on treating her like she wasn’t “anything special” (52). This was a “confusing” change for Lisa, and she often succumbed to tantrums. Once, Lisa’s small compact went missing; she looked everywhere for it in tears but later discovered that her grandmother had stolen it from her and put it in her own purse. Lisa reflects that she did “[act] like a princess sometimes” but this was contrasted by her persistent “self-doubt” (52).

Elvis had a string of girlfriends after he divorced Priscilla. When Lisa was nine, he was dating Ginger Alden, who “[drove] him crazy.” Lisa would sometimes overhear their arguments on the phone, and she hated seeing her father upset. Riley reflects that her mother’s experiences with Elvis’s girlfriends taught her “to put her children before her partners” (54). She always introduced her boyfriends to Riley and her siblings, and if they disapproved, “he’d be gone.”

Nine-year-old Lisa’s summer at Graceland was nearing an end, and her father was preparing to leave on tour. The day before she was scheduled to leave, they stayed up late playing racquetball, and Lisa went to bed after midnight. The next day, she woke up sensing that something was wrong. She rushed to her father’s quarters and found him on the floor of his gigantic bathroom, surrounded by people trying to help. Someone held Lisa back as she screamed for her father, then carried her out of the room. She watched as he was taken away on a stretcher, and everyone in the household waited for a call from the hospital. About an hour later, Lisa heard her grandfather “wailing” downstairs. All the inhabitants of Graceland were assembled, and Lisa’s grandfather was crying, “he’s gone, he’s gone” (58). Lisa felt “infuriated.” Her “greatest childhood fear” had come true, and her “life as [she] knew it was completely over” (59).

Elvis’s public viewing took place at Graceland, and Lisa sat on the steps while “endless seas of people” passed her father’s body (61). Watching the spectacle of sobbing, fainting fans made it difficult to separate her father from his public persona, and she struggled to grieve publicly. Lisa tried to “distract” herself from her grief, but the relief was always temporary. Even as an adult, she notes that the grief still overwhelms her sometimes.

Lisa’s life was “totally changed” following her father’s death. After his funeral arrangements were complete, she returned to LA with her mother, where her loss was compounded by the realization that she was “stuck” with her mother. Priscilla “tried to keep [Lisa] really busy” (63). She spent the rest of the summer at a camp in the mountains and touring Europe with her mother and aunt. She was able to experience moments of peace and enjoyment, but the memory of her loss was always waiting to pounce. Lisa missed Memphis terribly. She was allowed to visit during Christmas, Easter, and summer vacation, but she could no longer stay in her upstairs bedroom. In 1979, Lisa’s grandfather Vernon passed away, and her great-grandmother followed the next year. Although she wasn’t close with her grandparents, the losses had a numbing effect and added to Lisa’s trauma.

Riley notes that she sometimes found her mother drunk on her bedroom floor, listening to Elvis’s music and crying. However, she was 22 years old when she first heard Lisa intentionally play Elvis’s music for her children. She reflects that Lisa never “processed the loss” of Elvis, and her heartbreak was always apparent (67).

Lisa’s mother “sent [her] away a lot” but always made a big deal out of her daughter’s birthdays (69). Priscilla once took Lisa to see Queen and introduced her to Freddie Mercury. Another year, she introduced her to John Travolta. Travolta introduced Priscilla to Scientology, and she and Lisa joined the church. Priscilla was interested in existential questions, and the church “became [her] tribe.” Lisa attended a French school where many students had celebrity parents. However, Priscilla was strict about who Lisa could spend time with. Lisa felt as if she were her mother’s “trophy.” Priscilla wanted her daughter to have a “cotillion” and go to “finishing school,” and Lisa felt she was never able to live up to these expectations. She struggled to make friends and was often surrounded by cooks and nannies while her mother traveled. To some, she came across as a “spoiled brat,” but in reality, she “was terribly insecure, frightened, scared” (72).

After Elvis died, Lisa would dream about him twice a year. She felt like these were “visitations” from her father, and they occurred consistently until her son was born.

Chapter 3 Summary: “The Wall”

Lisa went through a string of different schools after her father died, where she repeatedly failed or was kicked out. She “started to develop a really bad attitude and [get] heavily into drugs” (78). Pink Floyd’s The Wall became her “bible” and “autobiography.” At the Apple Scientology school, she was constantly in and out of the principal’s office; she “seriously did not give a fuck” and her mother struggled to keep her under control (78). Priscilla finally enrolled Lisa in a boarding school in Ojai. At first, Lisa was “mortified,” but upon arrival, she met kids who were “spirited” like her. She would visit her mother on the weekends, but often, she got in trouble and had her weekend privileges revoked. At school, she “cycle[d] through different phases,” trying out being “a hippie chick,” a “punk rock chick,” and a “funk rock kid” (80). She continued to earn bad grades and remained exclusively focused on drugs. She wanted “anything [she] could swallow, snort, eat, sniff” but “never ran into heroin” until “later” (80).

Lisa made it through her first year in Ojai and spent the summer in Spain with a group from the Church of Scientology. When she returned to school in the fall, there was “some new wild girl,” and Lisa “pretended” she was at risk of dying from a drug overdose so her mom would take her out of school (83). During these years, Priscilla was dating an actor and model named Michael Edwards. Their relationship was volatile—full of drugs, partying, and violent fights that were “destabilizing” for Lisa. When Lisa was around 10, Edwards came into her room in the middle of the night for the first time. He touched her legs and told her “he was going to teach [her] what was going to happen when [she got] older.” (85). The next day, Lisa told her mother. Priscilla forced Edwards to apologize, but he continued to visit her in the middle of the night. He would spank her while commanding her not to look at him. When she showed her mother the bruises, Priscilla would make Edwards apologize; Lisa “would feel bad” and accept his apology. This continued to happen for years.

Edwards also had a “terrible temper.” Once, he threw a dining room chair at Lisa. It didn’t hurt her badly, but it “scare[d] the shit out of [her]” (88). She was also frightened by the violent fights she witnessed between her mother and Edwards. Riley muses that “these incidents” were some of Lisa’s “deepest childhood traumas” and “contributed to some of the fundamental feelings she carried, like shame and self-hatred” (89).

At 14, Lisa got her first boyfriend, a boy her own age, with whom she went to school. However, when she visited her mother on a film set, she became infatuated with a 23-year-old actor. She broke up with her boyfriend and began seeing the actor. Eventually, Priscilla found out, but Lisa was “madly in love,” and her mother couldn’t stop her from seeing the man. Priscilla allowed the relationship to continue with the concession that the two wouldn’t be alone together, but Lisa and the actor frequently snuck off to make out and have sex. Lisa notes that the relationship “was also history repeating itself” (91); Priscilla was 14, the same age as Lisa, when she began dating Elvis. Lisa soon discovered that the actor “was a total womanizer” with “[w]omen of all ages […] in love” with him (92). Nevertheless, they stayed together for over two years. They finally broke up after the actor had a friend secretly take pictures of him and Lisa to sell to the media. This incident represented Lisa’s “first big betrayal,” and she tried to die by suicide. However, she insists the attempt wasn’t “serious”; she made sure someone saw her take the pills and was taken to the hospital.

Riley suggests that the actor’s betrayal was one of her mother’s “core trauma[s].” She often talked about it as the first time she felt “used,” like “people had an agenda with her” (94). It marked a fundamental experience that established her “foundation of distrust in people” that she carried throughout her life (94).

Lisa returned to school after the fiasco with the actor but continued to struggle with poor grades and a lack of interest in schoolwork. Priscilla finally became fed up and took Lisa to the Scientology Celebrity Centre, where she was given a room. As soon as she was left alone, Lisa called a number of friends, including her cocaine dealer, and had a “four-day bender in that room” (95). Lisa woke up from the bender, kicked everyone out, and reached out for help. She was given a nicer room and the Scientologists who ran the center “made [her] promise to behave” (95). For a time, Lisa began to do much better, but then she moved back in with her mother.

For Christmas, she went to Florida with Edwards and her mother to visit Edwards’s daughter. Lisa and the daughter lied to their parents and went out together. Lisa insists they didn’t do drugs or drink much, but Priscilla no longer trusted her daughter. She kept her under constant watch when they went back to California and finally agreed to let her go back to the Scientology Celebrity Centre under the condition that she enter their Narconon rehab program. Lisa rebelled, claiming she would rather live on the streets. Their negotiations continued, and her mother finally agreed to let her live back in the Celebrity Centre without any caveats. When Lisa was found passed out drunk in front of her room, the staff decided to try a different approach. They named her caretaker of someone who was “legitimately addicted to drugs,” and Lisa “thrived” helping this other girl (97).

Chapters 2-3 Analysis

These two chapters remain mostly narrated in Lisa’s voice and recount some of the “core trauma[s]” of her childhood and adolescence, introducing the memoir’s thematic interest in Coming to Terms With Pain and Loss.

Both Lisa and Riley highlight the loss of Lisa’s father when she was nine years old as first and foremost among her core traumas—a defining moment for Lisa that created a clear before and after that would forever divide her life. Elvis’s death was the end of “life as [she] knew it” and forced the loss of her childhood innocence. Dealing with the loss of her father becomes a lifelong process for Lisa. Even before he passed away, she struggled with a fear of losing him. However, she “internalized” this fear, sharing it with no one, and eventually did the same with her grief. She remained “heartbroken” throughout her life, and Riley muses that her mother never “processed the loss.”

Lisa’s mourning was made more difficult by the collective loss that Elvis’s death represented to the world. She watched his fans “fainting and screaming and crying, grieving so hard” and struggled to express her own grief (61). As Elvis’s fans mourned the loss of Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll, Lisa “was trying to grieve [her] dad.” She couldn’t join in the public show of grief because these strangers were mourning the loss of something and someone different than the father she knew. This disconnect made her more deeply aware of her father’s “public persona” and the parts of him that didn’t belong to her. Instead of processing her grief, she “held it all in” and tried to “distract” herself. However, even as an adult, she notes that “[the grief is] still just there” (61).

The structure of Lisa’s memoir allows Riley to contextualize the traumas Lisa describes within the arc of her life in the public eye and her ongoing struggle with addiction, underscoring The Dangerous Effects of Fame and Living in the Spotlight. Riley points out Priscilla’s “destabilizing” relationship with Edwards. Priscilla and Edwards often engaged in violent fights, and Edwards sexually assaulted Lisa on multiple occasions. She was often left frightened for her own safety as well as that of her mother but felt helpless in the face of Edwards’s anger. Lisa was a “toughie” and generally continued to employ her tactic of internalizing her fear and grief. However, her trauma would sometimes bubble over in tearful breakdowns and also manifested itself in Lisa’s growing anxiety and sense of worthlessness. She began to mimic her father’s desire to “numb out” and turned to alcohol and drugs to deal with her pain—a pattern that reflects the text’s thematic engagement with The Inescapability of Legacy and Family Inheritance.

Riley and Lisa further emphasize this theme through Lisa’s “first big betrayal” by an older boyfriend. Lisa’s first significant relationship replicated her mother and father’s relationship; she was just 14 years old and dating a 23-year-old man—Priscilla’s age, when she met Elvis, who was 10 years her senior. Throughout her life, Lisa struggled with feelings of being “used.” She often felt as if “people had an agenda with her” and only wanted to be close to her because of her fame, wealth, and proximity to Elvis—feelings Elvis himself struggled with as well. When her older boyfriend betrayed her by selling photographs of them to the press, it confirmed her worst fears and cemented the “foundation of distrust in people” that Lisa carried throughout her life, affirming her self-doubt and sense of worthlessness (94).