Many of us claim dysfunctional mothers. I do. Reading about Julie Gregory's mother makes me thankful for what my mother did not do to me. Gregory suffered from a condition with the extravagant name of Munchausen by Proxy.

Baron von Munchausen was a real life teller of tall tales, and is best known through the Terry Gilliam movie, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. In the Munchausen syndrome, people make themselves ill for perverse psychological reasons. In the "by proxy" variant, a person makes someone else ill. Julie Gregory's mother made her sick.

Gregory grew up in a rural section of Ohio southeast of Columbus in the 1970's and 1980's. Her parents were in a mutually abusive relationship. There were many guns in the house, and her mother frequently threatened suicide. According to Gregory's account, her parents eventually set fire to the house for the insurance money. Much of what Gregory describes of her childhood fits in with stereotypes of Appalachian hillbilly life, though Gregory nevertheless finds fresh horrors to describe.

What makes the memoir unusual is the series of medical procedures which Gregory was subjected to, including cardiac catheterization, to investigate "heart ailments" which Gregory's mother had detected in her child. Gregory's doctors were duped by an apparently concerned mother to write prescriptions and do procedures, refusing only her mother's request to perform exploratory open-heart surgery on Gregory! In all likelihood, Gregory's symptoms were the results of stress and the side effects of unnecessary medication.

Gregory eventually ran away from her family and got Children's Services involved, though through a series of events, she was coerced back into the family before leaving for good. Gregory reports that, to her horror, her mother has taken in a set of foster children and may be abusing them. Her website reports correspondence with Child and Family Services in the state of Montana, where her mother now lives.

According to the introduction by Dr Marc Feldman, Gregory's case is not unique, though it's the first account by a victim of Munchausen by Proxy. He reports a figure of 1,200 cases annually, with many more going unreported. Gregory's account rings true. My own mother projected medical fears onto me. Later, a disorder I suffered from turned out to be psychosomatic.

At times, Gregory's writing suffers from irritating shifts in tense for no apparent reason. After the inspiring epiphany where Gregory leans about Munchausen by Proxy and diagnoses herself, there are several pages of cathartic writing which could have been trimmed. But overall, this is a gripping tale of a perverse form of child abuse which grows increasingly dramatic as one page turns to the next.

In this era of "family values," it's important to remember that not all families are good families. Gregory might have been better off, for instance, had she been raised by a gay male couple chosen at random. That might be difficult in the state of Ohio, where in 2004, voters passed a referendum to ban gay marriage and civil unions, and where President Bush won with the help of an increased turnout from rural church-going people like Gregory's parents. Families at their best can be wonderful, but often they're oppressive. One of the joys of modern life is the possibility of living as an individual free of obligation to family, kin and tribe.