Sandel, Laurie, The Impostor’s Daughter

Blog 1: The Impostor's Daughter: Laurie's Character Development, by Nicole Stewart

Graphic Novels have been used to tell stories, like any other book would, but there are pictures in panels to accompany the story. Graphic novels certainly can vary from author to author, artist to artist, and of course, storyline to storyline. It is important to view how they can be used as a tool to structure a historical narrative and keep meaning to them at the same time.
Laurie Sandell, a contributing editor at Glamour Magazine written a memoir of her personal life, specifically with her father’s relationship and created a graphic novel for it. The book, “The Impostor’s Daughter” follows Sandell as a little girl to her adult life, and how her father, Bill Sandell has been lying his way through his entire life. 

The Book's Cover
Bill was living a complete lie and was a complete fraud, and Laurie didn’t realize this until she grew up. He took on various personas, writing in other’s names, having people send fake mail, calling his home by fake names, and even made credit cards in his daughter’s name, when she didn’t even make purchases, receiving the wrong information. Laurie realizes her father isn’t exactly who he says he is, and she has to make the decision of sharing her father’s story to the world. She does, and while telling her story to celebrities that she interviews, her father is greatly upset. The two do not speak to one another for some time, causing a strain on the relationship and it continues throughout her adult life.

Of course, one of the central themes in this book is Laurie’s development as a character. Obviously, this is a real life memoir, so this all happened to her. As humans, we learn to grow and change. We are not always the same person that we were at a young age. Laurie’s relationship with her father is something that also develops throughout the book, as it affects her character development greatly and how she reacts to other people in the story. It is something that should be of an importance when it comes to this memoir.
Laurie Sandell in Real Life
The story begins with Laurie as a young child, going to her mailbox and we learn about Bill’s personality. It says that the mail would be stopped whenever Laurie’s father went out of town, and it didn’t matter how long her father was gone for, the mail would not come (Laurie Sandell 2). Laurie describes that the mail she did find was always addressed to a different person, indicating some kind of fraud her father had committed. She was young at the time, so she didn’t really understand what was going on. Her father had been lying ever since she was a child, and committed these crimes. It is easy to tell that in the first few chapters, Laurie is a daddy’s girl and wanted the attention from her father, rather than her mother (10). Though Bill would lash out at times, Laurie still loved him and later throughout the first chapters, there’s almost a sense of entitlement from her character. That all changes when Laurie turns 12 years old.
At the age of 12, Laurie found her father getting angry at her for the littlest things and she didn’t quite understand it. The two would often get into arguments, though Bill always found a way to make it seem like it was Laurie’s fault for the argument (33). It is clear that the two are still close, but not like they were before. Laurie is growing up, so she is more understanding of the world around her. Bill is taking advantage of that, and since Bill knows he has power over her and their relationship, he is going to do whatever he can to make sure he is right in every situation. Laurie didn’t know how to react to the situation. She wanted to make her father happy, and we see that in her character, though she's afraid of her father. She doesn’t understand his motivations or why he was acting the way he was. Laurie had asked her mother what her father did for a living and didn’t get exactly a straight answer, but she knew something was off (39). When she’s a senior in high school, she wants to be away from her father. It shows that the relationship between the two isn’t the same anymore. Laurie didn’t like her father as much, but she was also an adult realizing what people were like, and could understand everything around her as opposed to what her life was like as a child. She described her relationship with her father as “I loved him with intensity. I hated him with intensity. There was no middle ground” (40).
One of the Therapy Sessions in the Book
Throughout her college years, Laurie finds out about what a crook her father is. At the time, she is writing about her memoir of him, and she wanted to get in contact with her father. Though, one of the moments that really is strong with their shift in the relationship is when Laurie goes to visit and sit with her father at the coffee shop after she finished school. Laurie says that her father was lying to her about where he worked, and that some of the places he ‘worked’ at never heard of him before. He tries to threaten suicide and Laurie is not having it, saying it's not her fault for everything that has happened (81). This leaves her father speechless as Laurie goes off. It's a huge shift from Laurie’s character in the beginning, where she is a daddy’s girl, to where the relationship is strain since her father did so much damage by lying to her all her life. Though she privately writes about her father’s fraud, which really causes a strain in their relationship, as he doesn’t speak to her for years.
Her character development and her relationship with her father is something to think about. Of course, relationships are bound to change as people grow up. Though this development is important, because Laurie’s life and actions are based from what her father did. I don’t think a lot of fathers out there would lie to their children almost every day of their entire life. When a person lies throughout a relationship, obviously the trust will be broken and it will have an impact on a character’s development through the story. It is clear that Laurie’s character is not the same as she once was as a child and I believe that is something to take in consideration when reading this text.
Perhaps it is a way to show how complex human relationships are. We don’t know how people are going to react to certain actions or what the consequences are of actions. It's important to take a look at Laurie and Laurie’s character when it comes to human relationships with others, because this story is heavily based off of that.

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