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This story is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a penetrating look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who hated anything to do with domesticity. The Walls children learned to...
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Jillian Slater hadn't seen her father or his mother in almost 20 years until, on the news that her father had finally drunk himself to death, Adella Atwater, the manager of her grandmother's apartment house, calls and says Jillian's expenses would be paid if she'd fly in to New Orleans for the burial. What Adella didn't tell her was that the apartment house bears the dead weight of a long and painful history. As an investigation into her father's...
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[This book] is [an] account of one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history. It is the story of Dave Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played torturous, unpredictable games - games that left him nearly dead. He had to learn how to play his mother's games in order to survive because she no longer considered him a son, but a slave; and no longer a boy, but an "it."--Back...
4) Lush
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Unable to cope with her father's alcoholism, thirteen-year-old Sam corresponds with an older student, sharing her family problems and asking for advice.
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The New York Times bestseller—now with new material. Louie Anderson has appeared many times on "The Tonight Show", and his comedy specials on HBO and Showtime have won him wide acclaim. In this series of emotionally charged letters to his alcoholic father, Anderson reveals the sense of shame and insecurity that fuels his comic routines.
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When his mother passed away at the age of 78, Sherman Alexie responded the only way he knew how: he wrote. The result is this memoir. Featuring 78 poems and 78 essays, Alexie shares raw, angry, funny, profane, tender memories of a childhood few can imagine -- growing up dirt-poor on an Indian reservation, one of four children raised by alcoholic parents. Throughout, a portrait emerges of his mother as a beautiful, mercurial, abusive, intelligent,...
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"Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh "Shuggie" Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's war on heavy industry has put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. Shuggie's mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for his artistic brother and practical sister. She dreams of...
12) Leaving November
Author
Series
Clayburn novel volume 2
Summary
Vienne Kenney moved away from Clayburn and all its gossip to pursue a law degree in California. But now she has failed the bar exam again. She wonders if she is destined to be stuck forever, a failure, just like her father, in this two-horse Kansas town.
13) Kissing lessons
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"Hayden Vargas is a girl with a bad reputation who really just wants to finish high school and get away from her alcoholic mother and the whole boring high school dating scene, so when Emmaline Martin offers to pay her for lessons in attracting and managing boys it seems like a way to pick up some easy money for her post-high school life--but she did not count on the attraction she feels for her client's brother, Nolan, who is not only gorgeous, but...
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Receiving a mysterious guitar the night before she leaves the city to live with her mom and new stepdad, Lou believes that if she learns how to play it, she can bring a piece of her old life home.
From award-winning author Sara Zarr comes a story of the small moments that show us who we are, and how family is not just something you're part of, but something you make. Lou and her family don't have much, but for Lou it's enough. Mom. Her sister, Casey....
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In A Child Called "It," David Pelzer shared the harrowing story of his abusive childhood. Now, his brother Richard reveals a horrifying glimpse behind closed doors — and shares a message of strength and resilience.
Mom has no one like David around to beat on anymore. I am more afraid of her than ever...I get in more trouble for anything I do or say. Now I find that I'm always in trouble and I don't know why. Now that David is gone,...
Mom has no one like David around to beat on anymore. I am more afraid of her than ever...I get in more trouble for anything I do or say. Now I find that I'm always in trouble and I don't know why. Now that David is gone,...
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This volume is the second installment of a trilogy of books which depict the life of the author, who as a young boy was physically, emotionally, and psychologically abused by his obsessive mother. The book discusses Pelzer's struggling with his ability to fit in and adapt to the new environment around him as he is put into foster care. It also talks about the kindness of his foster parents and other people around him as well as his inability to brush...
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All those years you tried your best to break me, and I'm still here. One day you'll see, I'm going to make something of myself. "These words were Dave Pelzer's declaration of independence to his mother, and they represented the ultimate act of self reliance. Dave's father never intervened as his mother abused him with shocking brutality.