Memoir Dysfunctional

Two families assemble for a wedding at a family mansion on the beach in East Hampton. But as the festivities are readied, the father of the bride suffers a massive stroke from alcohol withdrawal and lies in a coma in the hospital. So begins Jeanne McCulloch’s vivid memoir of her wedding weekend in 1983 and its aftereffects on her family and the family of the groom. As McCulloch reveals, the repercussions from that weekend will ripple throughout her own family and that of her in-law as they grapple with questions of loyalty, tradition, marital honor, hope, and loss.

When Claire Hoffman's alcoholic father abandons his family, his desperate wife, Liz, tells five-year-old Claire and her seven-year-old brother, Stacey, that they are going to heaven - Iowa - to live in Maharishi's national headquarters for Heaven on Earth. For Claire's mother, Transcendental Meditation - the Maharishi's method of meditation and his approach to living the fullest possible life - was a salvo that promised world peace and enlightenment just as their family fell apart.

Farming has been in John Connell's family for generations, but he never intended to follow in his father's footsteps. Until, one winter, after more than a decade away, he finds himself back on the farm. Connell records the hypnotic rhythm of the farming day - cleaning the barns, caring for the herd, tending to sickly lambs, helping the cows give birth. Alongside the routine events, there are the unforeseen moments when things go wrong: when a calf fails to thrive, when a sheep goes missing, when an argument between father and son erupts and things are said that cannot be unsaid.

Lynn grew up the carefree daughter of a Miami undercover narcotics agent—until her dad snuck out of the house in the dark of night without a glance back. She never knew what happened to her father until she was in high school, and he was in prison for drug smuggling. By then, Lynn had developed a dangerous drug and alcohol habit of her own. It was the perfect setup for her to latch onto the only connection to her dad that remained when he was paroled from prison—cocaine.

"Violet Lemon" is a heart-wrenching, life-affirming journey through five decades of pain, survival, and ultimately—peace. It begins in December 1970, when young Violet and her brother are torn from their home and the loving father they once knew. Thrust into a world of instability, abuse, and betrayal, Violet’s childhood becomes a battlefield. Raised by a toxic mother and an abusive stepfather, she grows up surrounded by domestic violence, mental illness, addiction, and poverty. Told in powerful vignettes, this raw and poetic novel follows Violet over 50 years as she grapples with PTSD,...

With a touch of swagger and cockiness, Phelps describes his personal experiences in the Southern California dating world while exposing dysfunctional and sometimes bizarre behavior among the multitude of serial daters in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. If you’ve been happily married for 30 or 40 years this book may not be for you. However, if you’ve been in the dating marathon for years or recently new to the musical chairs of dating as a mature adult, you will be sure to relate. Phelps delivers an entertaining, somewhat shocking and thought-provoking look at single life of middle-aged women ...

Gary Gilmore, the infamous murderer immortalized by Norman Mailer in The Executioner's Song, campaigned for his own death and was executed by firing squad in 1977. Writer Mikal Gilmore is his younger brother. In Shot in the Heart, he tells the stunning story of their wildly dysfunctional family: their mother, a black sheep daughter of unforgiving Mormon farmers; their father, a drunk, thief, and con man. It was a family destroyed by a multigenerational history of child abuse, alcoholism, crime, adultery, and murder.

His name was Kevin but his keepers called him Zoo Boy. He didn't talk. He hid under tables and surrounded himself with a cage of chairs. He hadn't been out of the building in the four years since he'd come in. He was afraid of water and wouldn't take a shower. He was afraid to be naked, to change his clothes. He was nearly 16. Desperate to see change in the boy, the staff of Kevin's adolescent treatment center hired Hayden. As Hayden read to him and encouraged him to read, crawling down into his cage of chairs with him, Kevin talked.

Frances Stroh's earliest memories are ones of great privilege: shopping trips to London and New York, lunches served by black-tied waiters at the Regency Hotel, and a house filled with precious antiques, which she was forbidden to touch. Established in Detroit in 1850, by 1984 the Stroh Brewing Company had become the largest private beer fortune in America and a brand emblematic of the American dream itself; while Stroh was coming of age, the Stroh family fortune was estimated to be worth $700 million.

At the young age of three, while I was at school, my mother was murdered by her abusive new boyfriend. What would happen to her five unintentionally abandoned children? The heartbreak of the devastating loss of my mother was just the beginning of a series of tragic events that shaped my childhood. Lost in the chaos of abuse, I was the unseen collateral damage of domestic violence. I was forced to take on the role of the invisible child for self-preservation. I figured you can't hurt what you can't see.

Kathy Izard was a graphic designer, wife, mother of four daughters, and volunteer at Charlotte’s Urban Ministry Center when an unlikely meeting with formerly homeless author Denver Moore changed the course of her life. Inspired by Denver’s challenge to do more than serve in this soup kitchen, Kathy quit her job to take on what seemed like an unimaginable task in her second half of life - to build housing for Charlotte’s homeless.

This is my inspirational true story of childhood sexual abuse that I endured. The abuse was a secret, even to me, due to the fact that all the painful images were locked up in my subconscious for close to 37 years.

Hayden Herrera’s parents each married five times; following their desires was more important to them than looking after their children. When Herrera was only three years old, her parents separated, and she and her sister moved from Cape Cod to New York City to live with their mother and their new hard-drinking stepfather. They saw their father only during the summers on the Cape, when they and the other neighborhood children would be left to their own devices by parents who were busy painting, writing, or composing music.

Weaving between preparations for his father’s funeral and memories of life on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, Obed Silva chronicles his father’s alcoholism—a lifelong love that ended only at his death at the age of forty-eight, having poisoned himself one Carta Blanca at a time. Addiction respects no borders; the havoc Silva’s father wreaked on his family not only followed them north, where mother and son moved to escape his violent drunken rages, but would make itself felt even from the grave.

Discover a lifeline for surviving and thriving after narcissistic abuse with I Can’t Wait for My Father to Die by Emily Santos. This raw, darkly funny memoir and self-help guide follows Emily’s journey from enduring her father Richard’s psychological torment to embracing no-contact freedom at 43. Through gripping, first-hand stories of abuse—like a chilling inheritance hoax—and practical tools like the Freedom Victory Journal, Emily offers a roadmap to reclaim your worth, build a chosen family, and live free from a toxic parent’s shadow. If you loved Educated by Tara Westover ...

Her Last Death begins as the phone rings early one morning in the Montana house where Susanna Sonnenberg lives with her husband and two young sons. Her aunt is calling to tell Susanna her mother is in a coma after a car accident. She might not live. Any daughter would rush the thousands of miles to her mother's bedside. But Susanna cannot bring herself to go. Her courageous memoir explains why.

Jimmy, known by his friends as Meathead, is struggling to keep a secret. He wets the bed. Together with his dog and his pet ferret, Meathead rides his Big Wheel to misadventures in the gully, a swampy stream that cuts through his neighborhood. Impressing the older kids seems important, but it leads him into trouble. Losing his beloved pets and having his secret exposed, Meathead learns his lessons the hard way.

Implosion: Memoir of an Architect’s Daughter delves into the life of visionary architect Woodie Garber and the collision of forces in the turbulent 1970s that caused his family to collapse. Soon after the family’s move into Woodie’s glass house, his need to control begins to strain normal bonds; and Elizabeth’s first love, a young Black man, triggers his until-then hidden racism.

Fearful of prison time - or lynching - for violating Indiana’s anti-miscegenation laws in the 1940s, E. Dolores Johnson's Black father and White mother fled Indianapolis to secretly marry in Buffalo. Her mother simply vanished, evading an FBI and police search that ended with the declaration to her family that she was the victim of foul play, either dead or sold into white slavery.

Fugitives from a man as alluring as he is violent, Andrea Jarrell and her mother develop a powerful, unusual bond. Once grown, Jarrell thinks she's put that chapter of her life behind her - until a woman she knows is murdered, and she suddenly sees that it's her mother's choices she's been trying to escape all along. Without preaching or prescribing, I'm the One Who Got Away is a life-affirming story of having the courage to become both safe enough and vulnerable enough to love and be loved.