Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
A powerful, unforgettable memoir about a girl who escaped her childhood as a preschool drug dealer in rural Indiana--only to find no one can really "make it out" until they make peace with where their story began: home. "Home, it turns out, is where the war is. It's also where the healing begins."
J. Dana Trent was a preschooler the first time she used a razor blade to cut up weed and fill dime bags for her schizophrenic father, King. While King struggled with his unmedicated psychosis, Dana's mother, "the Lady," a cold and self-absorbed woman whose diagnosed personality disorder ruled the home, guarded large bricks of drugs from the safety of their squalid trailer. But when the Lady impulsively plucked Dana from the Midwest and moved the two of them South, their fresh start resulted in homelessness and bankruptcy. In North Carolina, Dana becomes torn between her gritty Midwestern past and her newfound desire to be a polite Southern girl, struggling to reconcile her shame with an ache to figure out who she is, and where she belongs.
But the past is never far behind. After persevering through childhood and eventually graduating from Duke University, Dana imagines her hidden Indiana life was finally behind her, only to realize that running from her upbringing kept her from making peace with the people and places that shaped her. Ultimately, Dana found that though love for family is universally complicated, there is no shame in survival, and for those who want it--there is always a path home.