Book picks similar to
No Direction Home by Greg Cayea
non-fiction
biographies-memoirs
bio-memoir
memoir
The Forgotten Child: The powerful true story of a boy abandoned as a baby and left to die
Richard Gallear - 2019
A baby boy, a few hours old, is left by his mother, wrapped in nothing but two sheets of newspaper and hidden amongst the undergrowth by a canal bank. An hour later, a late-shift postman is walking wearily home when he hears a faint cry. He finds the newspaper parcel and discovers the newborn, white-cold and whimpering, inside.After being rushed to hospital and against all odds, the baby survives. He’s baptised by the hospital chaplain as Richard.Everything feels as though it’s looking up; Richard is put into local authority care and regains his health. However, after nearly five blissful years in a rural care home filled with loving friends, it soon unfolds that his turbulent start in life is only the beginning…Based on a devastating true story, this inspirational memoir follows Richard’s traumatic birth, abusive childhood, and search for the truth.
Fierce: A Memoir
Barbara Robinette Moss - 2004
Barbara Robinette Moss grew up in the red clay hills of Alabama, the fourth of eight children, in a childhood defined by close sibling alliances, staggering poverty, and uncommon abuse at the hands of her wild-eyed, charismatic, alcoholic father. In Fierce, Moss looks at what happens when a child of such a family grows up. At once poetic and plainspoken, Moss, a "powerful writer" (Chicago Tribune), paints a vivid, moving portrait of her persistent quest to reinvent her life and rebel against the rural indigence, addiction, and broken dreams she inherited from her parents. With warmth, insight, and candor, Moss tells the poignant story of finally leaving everything she knew in Alabama to fulfill her ambition to become an artist. It is an odyssey filled with gritty improvisation (bringing her son, Jason, to her night job to sleep on the floor), bittersweet pragmatism (filling her purse on a dinner date with shrimp, rolls, and even a doily, to bring home to a waiting eight-year-old), and staunch conviction and pride (chasing a mail carrier down the street to defend her use of food stamps). As with many other children of alcoholics, the legacy of her father's alcoholism catches up with Moss, and an abusive relationship -- an inheritance and addiction of its own sort -- threatens to destroy all that she has accomplished. But as Moss learns to cope with her anger and pain, parenthood helps her discover true strength. Ultimately, Fierce is a warm, honest, and triumphant story, from a writer celebrated for her Southern lyricism, about a woman determined to make it on her own -- to shrug off the handicaps of her childhood and raise her son responsibly and well.
Melissa Explains It All: Tales from My Abnormally Normal Life
Melissa Joan Hart - 2013
She cast a spell on millions more viewers as Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. Now, in Melissa Explains It All, Melissa tells the frank and funny behind-the-scenes stories from her extraordinary past and her refreshingly normal present.Melissa has been entertaining audiences most of her life; when there were no girls named Melissa on her favorite show, the forceful four year old decided she'd get on television her way. From that moment on, Melissa has shown a singular determination and focus-whether it's for booking three national commercials so her dad would build her a tree house or for nailing the audition for Clarissa.From her first commercial to her current starring role in ABC Family's hit Melissa and Joey, Hart never let fame go to her head. She always had one foot in Hollywood and one foot in reality-and still does. Melissa makes us laugh along with her as she talks about:--guest appearances in shows like Saturday Night Live and The Equalizer --auditioning for Punky Brewster and Clarissa--her early Broadway days--wacky parties she's thrown and attended-- the actors who influenced her and whom she befriended, worked with and competed against --her experiences both on and off-set-with Sabrina's Salem the Cat and Elvis the Alligator on Clarissa --how she met the love of her life at the Kentucky DerbyMelissa Joan Hart explains all that she's learned along the way-what's kept her grounded, normal and working when others have not been so fortunate-and that she's the approachable, hilarious girl-next-door her fans have always thought she'd be.
The Chinaberry Tree
Lauren Alexander - 2011
The family is powerful for the same reasons it is vulnerable. There are deadlines for nurturing and restoring relationships, and, with its intricate makeup, it takes the entire family to save itself. THE CHINABERRY TREE is a rare memoir of a family at war with itself. It lays bare the erosion of the author's family of origin in the absence of divorce and any criminal or heinous behavior. Perception is the pivotal force in the family. This innovative memoir offers a slideshow viewing of the interwoven dynamics that fueled the author's original family life: harmony, humor, separation, sorrow, discord, despair, surrender and death. The youngest of four children, the author presents each and every family member, including herself, from the unusual viewpoint of an insider with no agenda, an insider spreading out pieces of a puzzle with no intention of finding the missing ones. Making no pretense of telling the whole story, she revisits her life within the family. The author began writing THE CHINABERRY TREE long before her family's fate had run its course. In the end, the author discovers that the undying family bond she counted on was a deep-rooted myth she cultivated amidst all the evidence to the contrary. In ruins, the family finally loses its power over her and the grief the author thought she would carry to her grave is put to rest.
The Girl in the Shadows: My Life in a Cult
Katy Morgan-Davies - 2019
Her father was the deluded and cruel leader of a cult based in South London who brainwashed those around him.Her father's paranoia and his need to completely control others led to Katy being imprisoned indoors and denied any kind of love or friendship. From a young age, Katy's father subjected her to violence and mental abuse. She was not permitted contact with anyone outside the house and on the rare occasions she did have to go out, she was always chaperoned. Katy never gave up hope of one day breaking free from her father's cruel clutches and finally found her freedom. This is her true story of endurance and survival.
A Stolen Life
Jaycee Dugard - 2011
It was the last her family and friends saw of her for over eighteen years. On 26 August 2009, Dugard, her daughters, and Phillip Craig Garrido appeared in the office of her kidnapper's parole officer in California. Their unusual behaviour sparked an investigation that led to the positive identification of Jaycee Lee Dugard, living in a tent behind Garrido's home. During her time in captivity, at the age of fourteen and seventeen, she gave birth to two daughters, both fathered by Garrido. Dugard's memoir is written by the 30-year-old herself and covers the period from the time of her abduction in 1991 up until the present. In her stark, utterly honest and unflinching narrative, Jaycee opens up about what she experienced, including how she feels now, a year after being found. Garrido and his wife Nancy have since pleaded guilty to their crimes.
Blue-Eyed Son
Nicky Campbell - 2004
His father – an ex-army man – and his mother helped him to a good school and a good university. Nicky rarely thought of his birth parents, until a combination of an imploding marriage and a chance meeting with a private detective led him to track his mother down. Nicky Campbell brilliantly recalls their reunion and tentative steps towards a relationship, evoking all the complex and deep-seated emotions that being reunited elicited in each of them. But as they talked it became clear that there was more to Nicky’s background than he expected. . . In this emotionally gripping and refreshingly honest memoir, Nicky Campbell describes the many sides of a family’s dark history, and how it feels to find out where you come from.
The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple
Jeff Guinn - 2017
His congregation was racially integrated, and he was a much-lauded leader in the contemporary civil rights movement. Eventually, Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to northern California. He became involved in electoral politics, and soon was a prominent Bay Area leader.In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones’s life, from his extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing to the fraught decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November, 1978 when more than nine hundred people died—including almost three hundred infants and children—after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink.Guinn examined thousands of pages of FBI files on the case, including material released during the course of his research. He traveled to Jones’s Indiana hometown, where he spoke to people never previously interviewed, and uncovered fresh information from Jonestown survivors. He even visited the Jonestown site with the same pilot who flew there the day that Congressman Leo Ryan was murdered on Jones’s orders. The Road to Jonestown is the definitive book about Jim Jones and the events that led to the tragedy at Jonestown.
Billy the Kid: An Autobiography
Daniel A. Edwards - 2014
Jesse walked out of prison a free man and disappeared, never to be heard from again. Never, that is, until 1949 when he came out of hiding after almost 60 years to claim his inheritance. In the course of proving his identity to a court Jesse told some amazing stories of his time when he was an outlaw but his biggest revelation of all was that his good friend Billy the Kid was still alive. Jesse led a young lawyer to an old man named not William H. Bonney but William H. Roberts who after some consideration finally agreed to come forward and reveal himself as Billy the Kid only if he would help him obtain a pardon from the Governor before his death so he could die a free man. You see, Billy the Kid was still wanted for murder and was condemned to hang. To come forward and reveal himself was to risk being arrested and put to death. This was a risk that William H. Roberts was willing to take. He sat down with the young lawyer and told his story. That story is the one true autobiography of Billy the Kid and told only one time, to one man. This is his story.
Sylvia's Farm: The Journal of an Improbable Shepherd
Sylvia Jorrin - 2004
The world of
Sylvia's Farm
is a rich landscape of natural beauty and simple pleasures. Sylvia Jorrín never expected to become the first woman in the New York City Watershed to solely own and operate a large livestock farm. But first the farm, and then farm life, captured her heart as it has captured the hearts of all those who have read her book. Through unexpected surprises and unanticipated hardships, Sylvia Jorrín has grown into the epitome of the one thing she never expected to be: a farmer.With a devoted following of readers inspired by her underlying appreciation of the world around her, Sylvia's Farm is the sort of ageless story that any reader can pick up and enjoy.
Sylvia's Farm
is, to quote Kirkus Reviews, "The delight-filled education of an out-of-the-clue shepherdess...." consisting of "....fine-grained, honest rural sketches, on a par with Noel Perrin and Don Mitchell."
Sylvia's Farm
is a contemporary account of rural farm life and all of the sometimes beautiful, always meaningful lessons that it continues to teach. Told in short vignettes that span over more than a decade, it is a journal of growth, persistence, and the unexpected joys that a new day can bring.
The Edge of Normal (Kindle Single)
Hana Schank - 2015
But when her second child is born with albinism, a rare genetic condition whose most striking characteristics are white blonde hair, pale skin and impaired vision, she discovers that the very definition of normal is up for grabs. A moving memoir with flashes of humor, this essay tells one mother’s story of navigating the spectrum of ability and disability, filled with both heartbreak and joy. And how ultimately she and her daughter learn to balance together on the edge of normal. Reviews and Praise THE EDGE OF NORMAL was selected for Amazon's Best Kindle Singles of the Year, and has been featured in the SundayTimes Magazine (UK), Longreads, and OZY. About the Author Hana Schank is an author and a technology consultant. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Atlantic.com, and her writing has appeared across the web and in national magazines. Her memoir, A More Perfect Union: How I Survived the Happiest Day of My Life, was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.
On Tuesdays I'm a Buddhist: Expeditions in an in-between world where therapy ends and stories begin
Michael Harding - 2017
All of a sudden, he found himself falling back into the old religious devotions of an earlier time. The meaning he had found through years of engagement with therapy began to dissolve.
Here, in On Tuesdays I'm a Buddhist, Harding examines the search for meaning in life which keeps him fastened to the idea of god.
After many therapy sessions focused on an effort to uncover personal truth, and long solitary months on the road with a one man show, Harding is finally led to an artists' retreat in the shadow of Skellig Michael.Mixing stories from the road with dispatches from his Irish Times columns, On Tuesdays I'm a Buddhist is a spell-binding and powerful book about the human condition, the narratives we weave around the self, and the ultimate bliss of living in the present moment.
'What happens between one story and the next? That's the really interesting part. That's the space where we find bliss; where we float sometimes, suspended, and only for a brief moment. Perhaps only for a few scarce moments in an entire life.'
Wholly Unraveled: A Memoir
Keele Burgin - 2019
Parties were punishable with violence. Fear was part of the daily norm. Growing up in a Catholic cult, under the unforgiving eye of her abusive father, Kathleen knew from an early age that if she were to survive, she’d have to do it on her own.But when the time came to escape, she found herself in a damaging spiral of self-destruction. At rock bottom, and with nowhere to go, Kathleen stepped off a bus in the last place she ever thought she’d find peace: a remote community in rural Canada. Spending a year in almost complete silence, Kathleen feared this experience would prove to be just another step in her unraveling. Instead, with her demons quieted, she emerged with a fresh understanding of self, an empowering new purpose, and a sense of worthiness that she would never let be challenged again.Wholly Unraveled is Keele Burgin’s gripping and inspiring journey of self-discovery and of finally finding her voice against nearly insurmountable odds.
Johnny's Girl: A Daughter's Memoir of Growing Up In Alaska's Underworld
Kim Rich - 1993
Kim Rich longed for normalcy, yet she was inescapably her father's child, and she had no choice but to grow up fast. Her mother was a stripper and B-girl: her father was a major player in the underworld of Anchorage, Alaska in the sixties, a city flush with newfound oil money. Only after her father was gruesomely murdered and Kim became a journalist was she able to fill in the missing pieces of one American dream gone horribly wrong. Kim's true story is a tale of a woman's search for her parent's secrets. What she finds is both shocking and tragic, but in the end she's able to discover her true self amid the remnants of her parents' lost lives.
Perseverance
Kristin Peck - 2014
Now, graduating from business school, newly married, Kristin is ready to take the next step of starting a family. But when Kristin’s first pregnancy ends with a miscarriage, she is devastated. When her second pregnancy does as well, Kristin and her husband Bob turn to in vitro fertilization – and are heartbroken again after a third miscarriage. Undaunted, they turn to alternate options, including surrogacy and adoption, but face setbacks at every turn, some so unthinkable that they never could have been predicted. In the most extreme of circumstances, when all of our careful plans are thrown out the window, how do we persevere? In spite of the pain and sorrow of the many years spent trying to start their family, Kristin and Bob remain positive, loving, and driven – and learn in their ultimately rewarding journey that life’s joys come more from the unexpected than from the expected.100% of Kristin Peck’s proceeds from the sale of Perseverance will be donated to Family and Children's Agency.Kristin Peck is thrilled to be the working mother of two amazing children. She keeps herself sane by belting out her favorite pop and country songs while running and completing triathlons, and is proud to have recently completed her first marathon. She is currently EVP, Group President of Zoetis, Inc., the world's largest animal health company. Kristin received her bachelor’s from Georgetown and her MBA from Columbia Business School. Kristin, her husband, two children and their dog live in CT. Perseverance is her first book.Cover design by Hannah Perrine Mode.