Niami describes the highs and lows of a rough childhood in this debut memoir, the first in a series.

When the author was 4 years old, about a year into her parents’ tumultuous divorce, she and her 7-year-old brother, Nile, were kidnapped by their father, Hazim, who told the siblings that they were going to Disneyland. Instead, they boarded a plane and flew to Hazim’s native city of Baghdad. Despite the strangeness of their new surroundings, the children quickly adapted to life in Iraq, enrolling in local schools and learning Arabic. After a year, the negligent and often cruel Hazim agreed to allow the children to return to their mother in America. Unfortunately, instability and negligence would continue to be themes throughout Niami’s childhood, as would abusive authority figures: Beginning at the age of 7, the author was molested by a series of men who initially appeared friendly but turned out to be monsters. As Niami recounts these traumatic experiences, she also touches on her life as a teen in Los Angeles in the 1980s as a die-hard fan of the band the Go-Go’s who experimented with drugs. The author recalls her difficult experiences with warmth and humor, even when describing the worst of times. Here she describes forcing herself to see the good in a night when, after attending an amazing concert, she was molested by her uncle: “This was the first and last time that The Bangles and the Go-Go’s ever shared the same stage exclusively…I wouldn’t have traded that for anything in the world. I wondered how my life would have been different if I hadn’t gone. Would it have really made a difference if I had had one less abuser in my life?” Like all survivor memoirs, the book often makes for a difficult read; one can almost feel Niami numbing herself just to remain a functioning human being. Her story demonstrates the ways in which certain tragedies seem to repeat themselves—and the ways people are forced to adapt in order to overcome them.

A heartfelt memoir of optimism in the face of abuse and neglect.