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Owen was raised by her aunt, Leah Kunkel and uncle Russ Kunkel, and her grandmother. She said she embarked on this book to learn about her mother, and herself.

My Mama, Cass: A Memoir by Owen Elliot-Kugell (Hachette Books, 2024) is about two lives.

“The positivity that my mom embodied was contagious,” Owen writes. “Her struggle and subsequent success as a big woman in a male-dominated business are awe inspiring. She persevered, never giving up. Ever.”

Owen Elliot-Kugell is Cass Elliot’s daughter. She was age seven when her mother died in London, England, after performing a series of concerts at the Palladium.

Two things most people know about Cass Elliot: She was in the Mamas and the Papas; and she died from choking on a ham sandwich. Except that last one isn’t true.

“‘Did your mom really die choking on a ham sandwich?’” Owen says she is always asked that question. “First of all, the chutzpah to say that to a child is just crazy, but it happened a lot. So I felt it was my duty to figure out what that story was all about.”

The story was invented by Cass Elliot’s manager and passed along to a reporter. Urban lore ever since. Death was due to her heart stopping, the ham sandwich is innocent. This time.

Cass Elliot was also not her given name, but that’s how most of us know her, or know of her. Ellen Naomi Cohen was her name, nicknamed Cassandra, but shortened to Cass. The book traces Cass’s career as a wannabe actress-singer to her folk trio groups to the Mamas & the Papas, and then her solo career. She died in 1974 at age 32. Sad in many ways, Cass was beginning to figure out her career after some missteps, establishing herself on television and in concerts, the albums were still a work in progress.

Born Owen Vanessa Hendricks, as Cass Elliot was legally married to Jim Hendricks, a marriage in name only. Owen grew up without a father, her biological father was not in the picture. Russ Kunkel, married to her aunt Leah, would be her uncle/father after her mother died.

Owen had an interesting life, which is an understatement. While the book tells her mother’s story, it is really about Owen’s serpentine journey between living with her aunt, grandmother, boarding school and a married woman and mother. She alternated between the coasts, life in the limelight and trying to be a normal kid.

Owen said the book was to collect, organize and verify the many stories told about her mother. She interviewed her mother’s friends and business associates, researched what was written and talked to her family.

Many of the stories in the book I had read before. Cass’s unrequited love for Denny Doherty, how at Cass’s house Crosby, Stills & Nash came together, how Cass married a guy to keep him from being drafted, the bullying Cass absorbed from John Phillips, and the hit on the head that seemingly allowed Cass to sing higher.

Besides the ham sandwich story, Cass lived most of her life dealing with her weight issue. Known as Mama Cass, Owen says her mother struggled to distance herself from that name, and the verbal bullying from kids and adults alike.

Owen says her mother was hospitalized five times in eight months for various issues, a situation her management team ignored. The focus was on building her career and earning needed money. Her estate remained open till 1987, when royalties from CD sales satisfied creditors.

“I found myself missing my mom a lot around the time that I became one,” Owen writes. “I wondered more than once what I had been like when I was a baby. I wondered about questions a daughter might ask her mother.”

My Mama, Cass: A Memoir is sad in many ways. Cass Elliot was full of life, and had an exciting journey ahead of her. Body-shaming was prevalent in a culture of young and beautiful. As Owen writes, he dealt with it with humor, but it stung. The saddest part is Owen growing up without her mother, but she rises above that, delivering a personal and interesting view from a daughter’s perspective.