Amen Amen Amen Memoir of a Girl Who Couldnt Stop Praying

Until the age of ten, Abby Sher was a happy child in a fun-loving, musical family. But when her father and favorite aunt pass away, Abby fills the void of her loss with rituals: kissing her father's picture over and over each night, washing her hands, counting her steps, and collecting sharp objects that she thinks could harm innocent pedestrians. Then she begins to pray. At first she repeats the few phrases she remembers from synagogue, but by the time she is in high school, Abby is spending hours locked in her closet, urgently reciting a series of incantations and pleas. If she doesn't, she is sure someone else will die, too. The patterns from which she cannot deviate become her shelter and her obsession.

In college Abby is diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and while she accepts this as an explanation for the counting and kissing and collecting, she resists labeling her fiercest obsession, certain that her prayers and her relationship with God are not an illness but the cure. She also discovers a new passion: performing comedy. She is never happier than when she dons a wig and makes people laugh. Offstage, however, she remains unable to confront the fears that drive her. She descends into darker compulsions, starving and cutting herself, measuring every calorie and incision. It is only when her earliest, deepest fear is realized that Abby is forced to examine and redefine the terms of her faith and her future.

Amen, Amen, Amen is an elegy honoring a mother, father, and beloved aunt who filled a child with music and their own blend of neuroticism. It is an adventure, full of fast cars, unsolved crimes, and close calls. It is part detective story, part love story, about Abby's hunt for answers and someone to guide her to them. It is a young woman's radiant and heartbreaking account of struggling to recognize the bounds and boundlessness of obsession and devotion.

"A witty memoir about living with obsessive-compulsive disorder....An inspiring story for young people who may be facing similar problems, rendered in charming, self-deprecating humor." Kirkus Reviews

"Sher's approachable style serves well to illustrate how obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) can begin quietly, rage out of control, and eventually be quelled." Booklist

"Abby Sher has written a beautiful book. It's deeply personal and original, but deals with the big issues we all struggle with — faith, family, food, and of course, Neil Diamond." A. J. Jacobs, author of The Guinea Pig Diaries and The Year of Living Biblically

"Amen, Amen, Amen is Abby Sher's brave, haunting, amazing memoir of her lifelong struggle with OCD. But it's more than this — it's an inspiring tale of a woman overcoming adversity, learning to trust herself, allowing herself to fall in love, letting go of her parents' complex legacy. For memoir lovers, it is a prayer answered. Told in the author's fresh, wise, witty voice, the book, at times, is impossible to put down. This incredible book makes for obsessive, compulsive reading." Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of She's Not There and I'm Looking Through You

Abby Sher is a writer and performer whose work has appeared in Modern Love: 50 True and Extraordinary Tales of Desire, Deceit, and Devotion and Behind the Bedroom Door: Getting it, Giving it, Loving it, Missing it, as well as in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Self, Jane, Elle, HeeB, and Redbook. She is also the author of the young adult novel Kissing Snowflakes. Abby has written and performed for the Second City in Chicago and the Upright Citizens Brigade and Magnet Theater in New York. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.