For Riley Keough, finishing mum Lisa Marie Presley’s book on Elvis, life, love was a duty

After Lisa Marie Presley’s death, Riley Keough helped complete her mother’s memoir of love, grief and life with the King of Rock & Roll

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Riley Keough and her mother, Lisa Marie Presley, in Los Angeles in 2017. After Presley’s death, Riley Keough completed her mother’s memoir. Photo: AP

Published: 5:45am, 11 Oct 2024Updated: 5:50am, 11 Oct 2024

Riley Keough was quick to agree to help complete her mother’s memoir. She thought they would write it together, reflecting on her extraordinary upbringing and life, but it became a much greater responsibility after singer Lisa Marie Presley’s sudden death in 2023.

Finishing the task her mother – the only child of singer Elvis and actress Priscilla Presley and a recording artist in her own right – had started years earlier elicited “all kinds of emotions”, Keough said in an interview ahead of the book’s release.

“It just felt like a kind of a duty that I had to complete for her,” Keough said. “I’m just happy that it’s done and that it’ll be in the world and there for people to read.”

From Here to the Great Unknown is named in a nod to the moving lyrics of Presley’s “Where No One Stands Alone”, a song Lisa Marie recorded as a duet with her father over 50 years after he first released it and over 40 years after his death.

The cover of Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough’s book. Photo: AP

The book touches on themes of “love and loss and grief and mothers and daughters and addiction”, Keough said, adding it was conceived as a way for Lisa Marie to tell her story in her own words and connect with others.