My favorite memoirs
Discover the best memoirs loved by avid readers! Explore captivating true stories, inspiring life journeys, and unforgettable personal accounts in this curated list of favorite memoirs.
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ID: 0743202198
(Type: books)
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ID: 042516683X
(Type: books)
Book
Blackbird
by Jennifer Lauck
With the startling emotional immediacy of a fractured family photo album, Jennifer Lauck's incandescent memoir is the story of an ordinary girl growing up at the turn of the 1970s and the truly extraordinary circumstances of a childhood lost. Wrenching and unforgettable, Blackbird will carry your heart away. To young Jenny, the house on Mary Street was home -- the place where she was loved, a blue-sky world of Barbies, Bewitched, and the Beatles. Even her mother's pain from her mysterious illness could be patted away with powder and a kiss on the cheek. But when everything that Jenny had come to rely on begins to crumble, an odyssey of loss, loneliness, and a child's will to survive takes flight....
Book
Still Waters
by Jennifer Lauck
Clutching her pink trunk filled with the relics of a lost childhood, twelve-year-old Jenny steps off a bus in Reno and into the wide-open future. Separated from her brother, Bryan, and passed from caretaker to caretaker, Jenny endures as she always has: by following the inner compass of the survivor. But when Bryan chooses a tragic destiny, Jenny must at last confront the secrets and lies that have held her prisoner for years. Embarking on a search for answers, the adult Jenny discovers that the past cannot be locked away -- even when unraveling one's own anger and pain seems impossible. Now, in the warmth of her marriage and in the eyes of her child, Jennifer finds her own miracles. A hardened heart learns to love. A damaged soul finds peace. And life, once merely a matter of survival, becomes rich with the joys of truly living.
Book
Show Me the Way
by Jennifer Lauck
"Carl Jung said, "Children are driven, unconsciously, in a direction that is intended to compensate for everything that was left unfulfilled in the life of their parents." It is this very statement that haunts Jennifer Lauck, and inspires Show Me the Way, a book of honest, funny, and touching stories from the trenches of motherhood." "Having lost both of her parents at an early age, Jennifer Lauck, author of the memoir Blackbird, as well as its follow-up, Still Waters, has in Show Me the Way come to terms with her past in order to move forward as a mother to her own children." "Lauck's stories touch upon themes common to so many of her readers: labor, delivery, and the physical details of giving birth; the decision to have a second child; the struggle to maintain independence against the pull of motherhood; the tenuous work/life balancing act; the gossamer threads holding family together; the soul-defining nature of caring for children; and the ultimate surrender of finally "getting it."" "Illustrating the author's insight, irreverence, and core of inner strength, Show Me the Way is a book for all mothers, and a rewarding conclusion for fans of Jennifer Lauck."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Book
Autobiography of a Face
by Lucy Grealy
"I spent five years of my life being treated for cancer, but since then I've spent fifteen years being treated for nothing other than looking different from everyone else. It was the pain from that, from feeling ugly, that I always viewed as the great tragedy of my life. The fact that I had cancer seemed minor in comparison." At age nine, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with a potentially terminal cancer. When she returned to school with a third of her jaw removed, she faced the cruel taunts of classmates. In this strikingly candid memoir, Grealy tells her story of great suffering and remarkable strength without sentimentality and with considerable wit. Vividly portraying the pain of peer rejection and the guilty pleasures of wanting to be special, Grealy captures with unique insight what it is like as a child and young adult to be torn between two warring impulses: to feel that more than anything else we want to be loved for who we are, while wishing desperately and secretly to be perfect.
