An emotionally raw, unflinching story of overcoming childhood abuse, neglect, and trauma.
Caldwell recounts growing up in an abusive home and discusses the failures of the American foster care system in this harrowing coming-of-age memoir.
In the book’s prologue, the author recalls, in characteristic hyper-detail, a failed suicide attempt where the safety mechanism of the gun she held in her hand “engaged by a fraction of a millimeter.” This disturbing episode sets the tone for the rest of the narrative, which offers a raw, unvarnished account of Caldwell’s childhood and adolescence (the author describes living in a “paradoxical state of survival and despair”). Connecting her personal story to her family’s generational trauma, the book begins with a family history that centers around her grandfather’s physical and verbal abuse. The author’s mother would subsequently abuse her in a similar fashion, compounding it with neglect due to her untreated schizophrenia. Following the death of her grandmother at a young age, Caldwell had a nomadic childhood split between a myriad of places that included her aunt’s home, stints in foster care, and a European hostel for foreign exchange students. In this no-holds-barred indictment of the “abyss of systemic failure” on the part of the government agencies and adults who were supposed to protect her, the author details the ways she endured physical, mental, and sexual abuse throughout her youth. When placed in therapeutic foster care, a specialized system for children who require significant psychological and emotional support, she was assigned to a foster parent simply referred to as “The Bitch From Hell” throughout the book, a stern woman with “unchecked power” who eschewed warmth and kindness for strict oversight of her wards’ daily existence. Even the rare person who showed Caldwell warmth—a married man who befriended the author and showered her with affection and gifts—proved to be a predator who groomed her into having a nine-year, intermittent sexual relationship that started when she was 14 years old.
While this is not an overtly spiritual or religious work, the author does occasionally mention her tumultuous relationship with God. She questions the lack of intervention when she needed help, yet also expresses gratitude for allowing her childhood pain to fashion her “into something magnificent and unyielding” as an adult. The author punctuates the raw narrative with moments of literary poignancy (“adults had failed me before, their promises as empty as our apartment’s bare walls”), and while it’s often a grim read, Caldwell seeks to inspire readers with similar backgrounds by highlighting her subsequent reconciliation with family and her personal successes (including admittance to law school) to serve as a “beacon of resilience and hope.” The book’s intimate prose often reads like a novel with its descriptive scene-building, character development, and internal monologues. The engaging storytelling is backed by appendix material that includes reports written by caseworkers that document Caldwell’s story, which she relayed to them at the age of 13. An accompanying website offers readers additional ancillary material, including a photo album that documents her life from birth through adulthood. This is a powerful story of resilience and self-empowerment as well as a reminder that “even in your life’s most shadowed moments, there exists a path forward.”
An emotionally raw, unflinching story of overcoming childhood abuse, neglect, and trauma.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2025
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Unbroken
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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