From Here to the Great Unknown

Riley Keough is Lisa’s eldest child and co-writer of From Here to the Great Unknown.

Riley was born in California on May 29, 1989. She was five years old when her parents divorced, and her mother married Michael Jackson. After Lisa’s second divorce, Riley moved with her mother and brother to Florida for a number of years before returning to California, where she would spend the bulk of her childhood and adolescence. Riley remembers “a dreamlike communal life” (168) in which she and her brother spent their days “running amok like [her] mom had done at Graceland” (167). Her parents created a “magical” childhood world for her and Ben in which they spent hours playing outside lost in their own imagination. For “a solid decade,” Riley felt that she lived in “a normal family, if famous” (174).

As a child, Lisa took her daughter “everywhere,” sometimes even pulling Riley out of bed in the middle of the night to bring her to a party and introduce her to a certain celebrity. Although they were all close, Riley frames herself as the “lightweight” in “a family of pirates” and could rarely keep up with her parents’ and brother’s ability to party. She describes herself as “the responsible one, in charge and taking control of pretty much everything” (245-46). However, this meant that she was often seen as the “narc,” especially as her mother and brother began to struggle more with their substance abuse issues. Her mother often accused her of being “too harsh” when it came to critiquing her or Ben’s alcohol and drug use. She believes her family saw her as “the downer” and “[did] things behind [her] back” (216). Nevertheless, Riley and her mother were close. She notes that Lisa was “constitutionally incapable of hiding anything from [her]” (xiv), but this “flaw” allowed Riley the insights she needed to help her mother finally tell her own story on her terms.

Known as “the King of Rock and Roll,” Elvis Presley was an American musician and one of 20th-century pop culture’s most influential figures. Lisa Marie Presley was his only child.

Elvis grew up in Tupelo, Mississippi, as “a small-town boy in a small-town family mired in poverty” (10). However, when his career took off, he became “a godlike figure, the biggest star on the planet” (10-11). Despite his fame, “he remained a Southern boy” (11), and Lisa’s descriptions of her father capture the man behind the celebrity mask. Elvis had a larger-than-life presence, as if he “could change the weather” with his moods, but he was also “gregarious,” generous, and funny (5). He was devoted to his only daughter, and he loved to introduce her while on stage and perform normal parenting duties like attending parent-teacher conferences.

In the years leading up to his death, his health had begun to decline, and he developed a substance use disorder. Lisa recalls seeing him “swaying” or falling a number of times. Once, she saw him lying in his bed and was “terrified” by “how bloated his stomach was” (45). He would often fly into rages when he couldn’t find “someone who would give him a fix” (44). Elvis passed away at Graceland on August 16, 1977. His public viewing lasted for “countless hours,” and Lisa remembers watching the public display of grief. Seeing his fans grieving the public persona of Elvis Presley made it difficult for Lisa to find the space for the private grief of losing her father. Elvis’s death was the end of “[her] life as [she] knew it” (59), and she struggled with the loss for the entirety of her adult life.

Ben Keough was Lisa’s second child and Riley’s younger brother.

Growing up, Ben was universally adored by everyone in the household. Even when he misbehaved, “[e]veryone loved him too much to stay mad at him” (172). If Riley and Ben fought and she happened to make her little brother cry, she was immediately overcome with guilt because “he could just break [her] heart so easily” (172). He was “an angel,” “sweet, soft, and gentle, an old soul” (159). Riley describes him as almost otherworldly, foreshadowing his early death.

Ben was very close to his mother. They had “a very deep soul bond” similar to the relationship that Lisa shared with Elvis and Elvis shared with his mother, underscoring the text’s thematic interest in The Inescapability of Legacy and Family Inheritance. Even as a young girl, Riley “had an instinct that Ben was the love of [their] mom’s life” (159). However, since Ben so closely adhered to these old family patterns, he was vulnerable to succumbing to other, more dangerous ones. Just like his great-grandmother, grandfather, and mother, Ben faced addiction and mental health crises. These conditions worsened as he was forced to watch his mother battle addiction and depression, and he died by suicide when he was just 27 years old.