Lisa Marie Presley’s posthumously published memoir reveals many deeply personal details about her life, including the pain of losing her father, Elvis Presley, when she was a child. Her daughter, Riley Keough, finished the memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown, after Lisa Marie’s unexpected death in 2023.

Ahead of the book’s release, Riley spoke with Oprah Winfrey about how profoundly Elvis’ death affected her mother. Lisa Marie had clear memories of his last days and recorded many of her thoughts while working on the autobiography that she never had a chance to finish. Losing her father was one of the most impactful events of her life.

Elvis and Priscilla Presley’s only child

Lisa Marie was born to Elvis and Priscilla Presley on February 1, 1968. She was the couple’s only child. “The King” adored his daughter and treated her like a princess, lavishing her with expensive gifts. He even named his private jet the Lisa Marie and once flew his daughter to Idaho on a whim so she could play in the snow.

Priscilla and Elvis separated in 1972 and shared custody of Lisa Marie, who traveled between California and Tennessee to visit them. She was staying at Elvis’ Graceland estate in Memphis when he died.

Lisa Marie sensed that something was wrong

On August 16, 1977, nine-year-old Lisa Marie woke up feeling “instinctively that something was off,” Riley told Oprah. She’d had a strange, unsettled feeling when she said goodnight to Elvis earlier. “I think she knew [when] saying goodnight like she had some kind of sense [about his death],” Riley said. “I think she had a sense many times that he wasn’t OK.”

Amid his deepening struggles with drug addiction and the resulting health problems, it was apparent even to young Lisa Marie that something was deeply wrong with her father. Riley explained to Oprah that her mother would occasionally discover Elvis looking “out of it” or unable to stand up without support, and she worried about him. Eerily, the child also wrote letters to her parents and included morose thoughts such as “I love my mommy and daddy and I hope you gis [sic] don’t die.”

Death of the King

On the afternoon of August 16, Elvis’ fiancée Ginger Alden discovered him unconscious on the floor of his bathroom at Graceland. Lisa Marie saw her father on the carpeted floor and watched Ginger’s attempts to save him. “I ran to him, but somebody grabbed me, pulled me back. They were trying to work on him,” she recalled in From Here to the Great Unknown. She was screaming, recognizing that something was horribly wrong.

The child called Elvis’ friend Linda Thompson in a panic and yelled  “My daddy’s dead! He’s drowned in the carpet” into the phone, according to Thompson.

Efforts to revive the King were unsuccessful. Elvis Aron Presley was declared dead at 3:30 pm on Tuesday, August 16, 1977, with the official cause of death listed as a heart attack. He was just 42 years old.

Long-lasting effects on Lisa Marie’s life

For the rest of Lisa Marie’s life, she struggled to come to terms with the tremendous loss she’d endured and, like her father, dealt with substance abuse issues. Riley Keough told Oprah that she witnessed her mother’s grief firsthand over the years, saying she would find her crying and listening to Elvis’ music. “I think her grief was very like — I don’t think she knew how to process it, and it was a very private thing for her,” Riley said. “I would walk into her room… [a]nd she would kind of be sitting on the floor crying, and she’d listen to her dad’s music.”

Like her father, Lisa Marie Presley died much too young. She was 54 when she passed away from a small bowel obstruction on February 12, 2023.

Telling her mother’s story

A month before her unexpected passing, Lisa Marie asked Riley to help her write an autobiography. After she was gone, Riley was left with Lisa Marie’s recorded interviews to guide her.

The process of listening to all of her mother’s recordings was emotionally taxing.

“It was incredibly painful but I couldn’t stop,” she wrote in the memoir. “It was like she was in the room, talking to me. I instantly felt like a child again and I burst into tears.”

She said she’s proud to share Lisa Marie’s life and memories with the world. “I aim not only to honor my mother, but to tell a human story in what I know is an extraordinary circumstance.”

Back home at Graceland

In her notes, Lisa Marie spoke at length about the “unconditional love she felt from her father, about being upstairs at Graceland, just the two of them, a sanctuary from the chaos of her life.”

She’s now at rest in the family cemetery, near her father’s grave, at the fabled home where they spent so many cherished times together.