Abby and Her Sisters

Melanie and Robert Bellah, now in their 70s, had four daughters: Tammy, Jenny, Abby, and Hally. The girls grew up in Berkeley, CA, where Bob taught sociology at Cal and Melanie practiced family law. They were a loving family. In 1973 they lost Tammy, 19, by suicide. In 1976 they lost Abby, 17, in an auto accident on a steep Berkeley street. All four girls had kept diaries. Years later, Jenny and Hally shared theirs with Melanie. This astonishingly intimate reflection, part contemporaneous and part looking back, uses theirs. For a preface, Melanie uses "The Theological Mind at Work," a short conversation about suffering between Abby and Melanie that Bob heard and transcribed. Abby's creed. Melanie's own creed is represented by a conversation between Pastor Henrik Bergman and Queen Sophia of Sweden, interviewing him for the post of Chaplain at the Stockholm hospital she founded, on the same subject (from Ingmar Bergman's biographical film, Best Intentions). At a recent book talk, she also spoke of Mozart.Melanie has always written well. Her poems have appeared in selective anthologies. She wrote "Bow Wow Meow! A First Book of Sounds" when Abby and Hally were small and it is still in print today. She wrote much as a lawyer. Recently she wrote "Tammy: Biography of a Young Girl" in 1999, weaving Tammy's words together with hers. And now, focusing on the girls' life together, she has written Abby's story. If the idea interests you, read the book. The experience goes far beyond what I can describe.