Teen Sold a Novel Her Mom Once Loved, Then Found It Again, Along With a Goodbye She Missed

When Christine Sexton took her own life at age 41 in a Dallas jail cell, she left no message, never said goodbye, to her teenage daughter.What she did leave was a bag of books.There were classics such as To Kill A Mockingbird and a series of young-adult novels written by Ellen Hopkins, many of them dealing with the ravages of crystal meth the drug that contributed to the downward spiral of Sarah-Raspberry Epiphany Farmer's mother.And there was House of Leaves.Farmer, now 19, read them all after her mother's death in 2013 but couldn't tackle House of Leaves, an unconventional and polarizing novel written by Mark Danielewski in 2000.The book "was nibbled on in the right corner," Farmer said, and had flecks of a bluish-teal paint on the cover.Frustrated, she gave up on it in 2014 and sold it to Half Price Books on Hulen Street in Fort Worth. Years later, she regretted that decision. Late last month, she decided to do something about it."I had been begging my fiance for a couple of days about going to a bookstore, and we just happened to be in Arlington ... and we saw a Half Price Books there," she said.  Continue reading...

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