"My mother killed herself on the first day of spring." So begins "South Mountain Road," Hesper Anderson's elegant, wrenching memoir of death and deception, family secrets and memories, and of a young girl's trauma of self-discovery. When Hesper Anderson, the daughter of famed Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Maxwell Anderson "(What Price Glory?, Winterset, Key Largo, The Bad Seed)," got the phone call informing her that her mother, the beautiful, enigmatic Mab, had committed suicide, she knew that her world would be forever changed. A woman of baffling remoteness and alienating beauty, Mab Anderson had been the dominant figure in her daughter's life. What Hesper did not realize, however, was that beyond the inevitable devastation of loss lay a whole chain of discoveries that would link her irrevocably both to her mother's past and to secrets that would turn her world upside down. Hesper was a shy young girl, insecure and -- to her mind -- inadequate. As a result, she spent much of her childhood adrift, rendered all but invisible by the alienating shadow of her mother, surrounded (but not impressed) by the brilliance and cele