October 1, 2022
Stand-up comic, actor (e.g., Netflix's Cobra Kai), and host of the No. 1 food podcast in the country, Green Eggs and Dan, Ahdoot uses an essay format in Undercooked to explain how food became a crutch and finally a dangerous obsession for him, starting with his brother's untimely death. Before he died of cancer, Braitman's father rushed to teach her important things like how to fix a carburetor and play good practical jokes; long after his death, she realized the cost of What Looks Like Bravery in suppressing her sorrow at his passing; following the New York Times best-selling Animal Madness. In Forager, journalism professor Dowd recalls her upbringing in the fervently Christian cult Field, founded by her domineering grandfather, where she was often cold, hungry, and abused and learned to put her trust in the natural world. Hospitalized from ages of 14 to 17 with anorexia nervosa, Freeman (House of Glass) recalls in Good Girls her subsequent years as a "functioning anorexic" and interviews doctors about new discoveries and treatments regarding the condition. In Happily, which draws on her Paris Review column of the same name, Mark uses fairytale to show how sociopolitical issues impact her own life, particularly as a Jewish woman raising Black children in the South. Philosophy professor Martin's How Not To Kill Yourself examines the mindset that has driven him to attempt suicide 10 times. Award-winning CBS journalist Miller here limns a sense of not Belonging: abandoned at birth by her mother, a Chicana hospital administrator who hushed up her affair with the married trauma surgeon (and Compton's first Black city councilman) who raised Miller, the author struggled to find her place in white-dominated schools and newsrooms and finally sought out her lost parent (60,000-copy first printing). From Mouton, Houston's first Black poet laureate and once ranked the No. 2 Best Female Performance Poet in the World (Poetry Slam Inc.), Black Chameleon relates an upbringing in a world devoid of the stories needed by Black children--which she argues women must now craft (60,000-copy first printing). A graduate of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa, Mount Holyoke College, and Columbia University, Ramotwala demonstrates The Will To Be in a memoir of early hardship (her mother's first-born daughter died in a firebombing before the author was born) and adjusting to life in the United States (75,000-copy first printing). In Stash, Robbins, host of the podcast The Only One in the Room, relates her recovery from dangerous drug use (e.g., stockpiling pills and scheduling withdrawals around PTA meetings and baby showers) as she struggles with being Black in a white world. Author of the multi-award-winning, multi-award-nominated No Visible Bruises, a study of domestic violence, Snyder follows up with Women We Buried, Women We Burned, her story of escaping the cult her widowed father joined and as a teenager making her way in the world (100,000-copy first printing).
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February 15, 2023
In this poignant memoir, journalist Dowd recounts her calamitous youth growing up in an apocalyptic cult. As the progeny of the cult's prophet, Dowd was expected to strictly adhere to all rules without question and learn how to survive in the wilderness. Affection, whether familial, platonic, or romantic, was forbidden. Outsiders were not to be trusted, even blood relatives. Dowd was subjected to starvation, neglect, and abuse as tests of strength and punishment for alleged misdeeds. In her early teens, Dowd was struck with a serious illness that left her hospitalized for long stretches of time. Throughout her recovery, she realized that escape was her only means of survival. Drawing on skills she learned from the cult, Dowd is ultimately able to break free. While the subject matter is heavy, Dowd's self-assured prose ensures that the reader is never crushed. Beautifully delicate illustrations and foraging tips also keep things bright. An inspiring and insightful tale of resilience in the face of adversity, this book is hard to put down.
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March 20, 2023
In this surprisingly plucky debut, journalism professor and essayist Dowd details her childhood in an apocalyptic Christian cult founded by her grandfather. On a mountain in California’s Angeles National Forest, Dowd and her family survived off the land, read only the Bible, and performed in a traveling circus for the little money they needed to support themselves. For Dowd, however, God’s love was less an embrace and more “like rounds of chemotherapy.” When an autoimmune disorder shuffled her in and out of the hospital as a teenager, the outside world started to creep in, and cleaning jobs for clients on the outside further awakened her to the concept of home and the possibility that she might go to college. After going on a date to her first-ever movie with a former cult member, Dowd was excommunicated at age 17 and struck out on her own. Her choice to begin each chapter with field notes about the plant species that kept her alive during her childhood rises above gimmick, but her prose can be overwrought, and her too-general engagement with the cult’s inner workings is frustrating. Still, this is an undeniably powerful saga of personal survival. Agent: Lucinda Halpern, Lucinda Literary.
Starred review from February 1, 2023
A moving and intense tale of the author's experiences in an apocalyptic cult. "I grew up on a mountain, preparing for the Apocalypse," writes Dowd at the beginning of this enthralling narrative, which describes her upbringing in the 1970s and '80s in the Field, a religious cult founded by her grandfather in 1931. She spent her childhood preparing for the imminent end of days on "a sixteen-acre undeveloped camp sitting on the San Andreas Fault." As a young girl, she underwent extreme military training, tests of her pain tolerance, and months of abandonment by her parents, who were frequently on a national tour known as "the Trip." Forbidden to speak to "Outsiders," unless she was raising money for the Field, Dowd turned to the landscape for solace and survival, drawing on her substantial knowledge of edible flora. "Violence is everywhere, and no one around here seems to care, least of all the God of my fathers," she writes, delineating years of abuse, forced hunger, and neglect. Taught that holding hands out of wedlock is grounds for expulsion, and even affection between mother and child is sinful, she grew up without any outward indication of love. Certain that her family would readily sacrifice her if asked, she writes, "as descendants by blood, I think the only real distinction my cousins and I have from other leaders' kids is knowing Grandpa would kill us if God asks him to." Heartbreaking and difficult to put down, this book lyrically chronicles an impressive rise out of illness, poverty, and indoctrination. As she struggled with growing into a woman in an unsafe and patriarchal environment, Dowd realized she needed to escape. However, she notes, "freeing oneself is the first step; claiming ownership of that freed self has been a lifelong journey." Leaving the cult meant losing her family and understanding of the world, with only her ecological knowledge and mental toughness to carry her forward. A harrowing, engrossing story of survival amid painful circumstances.
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