Scientology provided an escape from toxic family life and an avenue for “introspection”, but it was the birth of her children, Riley and Benjamin, that finally grounded Lisa Marie. Still, the calm didn’t last long and chaos again followed, with a two-year marriage to Jackson, where the two maintained a dysfunctional union. Lisa Marie says Jackson was obsessed with Elvis’ death, regularly quizzing her on the details and convinced he would die the same way.

Opioids after another pregnancy would unravel the stability and control Lisa Marie had otherwise achieved in “her happy years” (which unfortunately go unrecorded in the memoir). During particularly difficult withdrawal episodes, she would drive from Memphis to Graceland to sleep in her father’s bed, quietly weeping while tours took place downstairs.

Tragedy and trauma stalks those living in the King’s shadow, including grandson Benjamin, who was beleaguered by alcohol dependency and took his own life in 2020. His sister provides lurid detail of his death, including the fact that Lisa Marie kept his body on ice for two months at her own home. Her mother was never able to fully recover from this loss, using opioids to again numb herself (almost 80 pills a day at one point).

Pieced together from incomplete recordings Lisa Marie made before her death, From Here to the Great Unknown provides an uneven and abridged retelling of an agonised life. Although daughter Keough does try – often vainly – to stitch together her mother’s history, there’s a feeling of revisionism at play. Keough regularly digresses at key moments, sometimes even drawing on textbook psychology to help explain Lisa Marie’s motivations and actions, which overlays the memoir with a disruptive and contrived analysis.

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The grief Keough no doubt suffered does make this slim book feel premature. Its major gaps and apparent silences also make Lisa Marie an unknowable and unreflective figure, besieged by trauma and always reaching for a self-understanding that never seems to come. There are some admissions from the singer – discussing past abortions and her complicated relationship to Priscilla – but these are few and fleeting.

From Here to the Great Unknown retells a deeply tragic family history, one where the fault lines are addiction, trauma and the rot that wealth and fame can cause. Anyone seeking insight into the Presley dynasty will likely find this truncated memoir a stilted experience.

Despite Keough’s best intentions in sharing her mother’s autobiography, the memoir only resolves itself with Lisa Marie’s untimely death in 2023. It’s a forlorn reminder that three generations were never able to fully protect themselves from the burden that comes with being a “Presley”.

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