All in a Moment begins with a devastating absence. When Mallina Wilson is fifteen, her mother, Amina, leaves their Seattle home after tucking her into bed and never returns. Nearly two years later, Amina’s remains are found, and investigators associate her death with the Green River killings. That event gives this true crime memoir its most urgent question, but Wilson takes time to show us the woman and family behind the case. She traces her grandmother’s guarded history, her mother’s restless search for freedom, and a childhood spent moving among communes, relatives’ homes, and schools across two continents. The result is an intimate account of how a daughter comes to know her mother more fully after losing her.

Wilson is especially good at remembering what adult choices felt like to a child. A beloved dog is given away while she’s living in Paris; a school day begins with her mother sending her little brother along for show and tell. Other memories hold warmth: music filling a car on a long drive, fresh bread coming out of the oven, and hours exploring beaches and woods. These details give the family memoir its texture. Wilson loves her mother’s imagination and generosity, and she’s candid about the hunger, instability, and exposure to danger that shaped her own childhood. Her affection and anger can occupy the same page, which makes their relationship feel real.

After Amina disappears, Wilson searches Seattle’s alleys and posts missing-person flyers with a friend. As the years pass, she also describes her struggle with alcohol and drugs, her fierce love for her daughters, and the difficult work of changing her behavior. Those chapters make All in a Moment a recovery memoir as well as a story of grief. Wilson recounts choices she regrets with unusual directness, including the ways her drinking affected her children. She brings the same scrutiny to the investigation and the news coverage of her mother’s death. The case takes a painful turn when Gary Ridgway is arrested but isn’t charged with Amina’s murder. Her killer remains unidentified. Wilson lets that uncertainty stand, even as she describes the damage done when an incomplete story about her mother became public fact.

The book’s later chapters spend more time on prayer, amends, and forgiveness, culminating in Wilson’s solo walk along the Way of St. Francis in Italy. Some reflections return to lessons she’s already expressed, though the scenes on the trail give those ideas fresh footing. A wrong turn, a frightening encounter with a bull, and an unplanned stop at a monastery show her practicing the trust she’s spent years trying to learn. As a spiritual memoir, All in a Moment is most persuasive when Wilson stays close to moments like these and allows the reader to see her thinking change. Her story carries its unanswered questions into a life built around her daughters, her faith, and her continuing effort to meet people, including herself, with compassion.

Pages: 472 | ASIN: B0HHWJQRWB