An abuse survivor reflects on her troubled past and path to healing in this memoir.

The book’s opening pages read like the start of a teenage adventure novel, as a 14-year-old Nack navigates a storm aboard a ship captained by her father in the North Pacific Ocean. “I looked behind me as a wall of water three stories high rose,” she writes, as she describes fighting against “angry gusts” and waves that rocked the ship. Traveling from Tahiti to San Diego on their second ocean crossing of 1975, Nack and her three sisters lived the life of adventure and travel most teens could only dream of. Yet, as she writes in the book’s raw narrative, her teen years were marred by sexual, mental, and emotional abuse at the hands of her father, a Norwegian immigrant to Canada who ruled his ship (and daughters) with a rigid, bizarre set of rules. They were forbidden, for instance, from shaving their legs and wearing bras. Reflecting on her father’s proclivity for sexual abuse, Nack likens herself to “prey being hunted, my fear lay just below the surface as I constantly tracked his presence.” The author recalls that her alcoholic mother, who spent Nack’s childhood “in and out of mental hospitals,” provided little respite while the teen was stateside between voyages. The sequel to Nack’s 2015 memoir, Fourteen, this book explores how childhood trauma affected the author through her young adulthood and beyond, from her relationships with boys and painful decision to get an abortion to her struggles with addiction. Even after her involvement in Alcoholics Anonymous, Nack felt “a cavernous hole inside.” While changing some names to protect anonymity, the author’s brutally honest account does not shy away from her painful past, including her family’s antagonistic response to the release of her first memoir that culminated in the overdose death of one of her sisters after its publication. Yet this is ultimately a story of self-empowerment and healing, as Nack would eventually graduate from UCLA and forge a loving relationship with her husband.

A powerful story of childhood abuse and the long journey to recovery.

The long affair between William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies was news fodder for much of the 20th century. In Nack’s novel, Marion tells her side.

That story is very well known. William Randolph Hearst was a legendary publishing baron; Marion Davies (nee Douras) came from a middle-class but aspiring family in Brooklyn. Marion’s mother’s mission in life was to see that all four of her daughters married well. Marion exceeded Mama’s wildest expectations but for one small hitch: The man she partnered with was already married. WR’s wife would never agree to a divorce, but while Marion sometimes cheated on WR, in a deeper sense, she was faithful to him to the end (he died in 1951, she 10 years later). We revisit the highlights: her off and on affair with Charlie Chaplin; the mysterious death of Thomas Ince on the aborted cruise to Catalina; her pregnancy and the coverup; and the bombshell that was Citizen Kane. Nack wisely chooses Marion as the narrator, the voice. And her voice is true. She often sounds ditzy, but she really isn’t. She is ambitious and insightful (and, we learn, a very good comic actress) and really loves WR, as frustrating as that so often is. Hearst was born in 1863, so he is more a product of the 19th century than the 20th, and he views Marion as his creature and he as her protector, which of course infuriates her. And as an undercurrent, there is the truly jaw-dropping wealth—the mansions and retreats, the private train cars, the unending parties, the drinking and drugs (Marion was clearly an alcoholic), and the shopping sprees (WR can express his love only through things, from huge bouquets to diamonds). WR loves Marion deeply, but, a man of the 19th century, he is clueless as he patronizes her again and again and sends goons to spy on her. But the mistress—in both senses—of San Simeon was his comfort to the end.

A detailed, moving portrait of a complex woman in a complex life.

A debut memoir reveals a turbulent adolescence.

At first glance, the voyage of Bjorn Johansen and his three daughters from San Diego to the islands of Tahiti in 1975 aboard the Aegir (Norwegian for “lord of the stormy seas”) has all the makings of a standard adventure story. But there is much more beneath the surface that sets this stirring book apart from other renderings of the challenges of adolescence. Nack is the middle daughter, who turned 14 years old right before they set sail, and she cleverly provides a definition of “navigation” in the opening pages because it serves as one of the text’s central metaphors. Her mother, often absent from the action here, struggled with mental illness and substance abuse. The author’s early characterization of her father as “volatile and demanding” is an understatement, as he turns out to be physically, emotionally, and sexually abusive. Thus the inclusion of “Survival” in the subtitle acquires another layer of meaning. In a breathtaking scene, Nack bravely defies her father’s orders and confronts him about the sexual abuse. She writes: “We’d been at sea seventeen days. He was like a lion crouching low, studying his prey. The gazelles eventually get worn down. They cannot be on high alert every moment of the day. Nobody can. I was tired of being scared.” After a series of cultural encounters and harrowing events once they reach their destination, the return voyage involves a different boat and crew. Although the riveting book ends before they make landfall, it is an appropriate moment to reflect on what has happened up to this point. The exhausted crew has just emerged intact from a ferocious two-day storm, which required lots of concerted effort and skilled maneuvering. They’re not there yet, but they are getting close. In keeping with the tone of the project as a whole, this ending, while somewhat abrupt, is powerful and inspiring. Perhaps the only quibble is that Nack leaves readers wanting more.

An engaging account, gripping from start to finish, that should appeal to a wide audience, including sailing enthusiasts.