Burn Down The Ground, by K. Crews

Paying absolutely no mind to the book I should be reading for book club next week, I've been breezing through some fluffy memoirs instead. I say fluffy because when you compare any modern prose to the treacherously slow, reserved, and tempered style of Edith Wharton, pretty much everything feels light and airy and let-your-hair-down fun.

I had caught a powerful radio interview given by this author's husband. It was only in passing that he mentioned that his wife had her very own off-the-wall personal story to tell. What he shared was that Random House published her memoir and that her childhood was "fucking crazy." What he didn't mention was that his wife is a hearing child of two deaf parents, one of whom was an angry, abusive drunk, who raised their children in an eternal haze of marijuana smoke while living in a makeshift home in the woods without running water. And yet Kambri Crews' memoir opens with her on her way to visit her father. In prison.

I'm fascinated by tales of humans born and thrust into the care of people who probably should have waited to get their acts a tad more together before jumping into parenthood. There are a lot of us that share this common thread. We tend to be resilient on good days and sad, quiet souls on bad ones. Crews' memoir is a testament to the good days.