Mia Fontaine

Mia Fontaine is the co-author with her mother Claire of Come Back: A Mother & Daughter’s Journey Through Hell & Back. An unflinching true account of a teenage girl’s dizzying, drug-fueled descent into society’s underbelly and a mother’s desperate and ultimately successful attempts to bring her back, it is a riveting, lively, and often humorous tale of triumph over adversity and of the hero that lies within each of us. Since its publication, Mia and Claire have been sharing what they learned from their extraordinary experience, speaking at child advocacy organizations, schools and universities, Jewish groups, and writers’ conferences across the country.

Mia and Claire have appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America, Montel, The O’Reilly Factor, and were featured in Family Circle, Glamour, Ok!, Women’s World, and First Magazine. The recipients of the 2007 Dr. Richard Carmona Doorway of Hope Award for work that inspires youth to leave the street, they continue to receive rave reviews for the moving, inspiring and life-changing speeches they give across the country. They can be booked together or separately.

In talks Mia chronicles her transformative journey and shares her precarious refuge in the abyss of criminals and heroin addicts, the painful childhood trauma that caused her near self-destruction, and her remarkable, if controversial, process of healing. After Claire’s heroic, arduous efforts to find and rescue her, Mia was sent to a controversial behavior modification school, first in Eastern Europe, then in Montana. The environment at Mia’s school was alien, the rules extreme: no contact with the outside world (no TV, radio, magazines,) total silence, save the intense hour of daily group therapy, or necessary requests, which had to be made in German.

But for an extreme kid, extreme measures worked and Mia overcame addiction, depression, and self-hatred to emerge a strong and positive young woman who in three years went from being a high school dropout in the back of a van in rural Indiana to being a graduate from one of our nation’s most prestigious universities.

Mia and Claire’s story is a powerful portrayal of the primal bond between mother and daughter that will resonate with audiences long after they’ve left the theater.

Mia has worked with the Special Olympics, the Smithsonian Institute, and the National Geographic Society. She now works in the publishing industry as a publicist.

A Mother and Daughter’s Story of Triumph Over Adversity

The Work of Art that is The Mother/Daughter Relationship

The Examined Life: The Power of Memoir

Life 101