NINETEEN

Nack offers a sequel memoir about her family struggles while growing up in the 1970s and ’80s.

The author follows up Fourteen (2015) with another introspective look at her life, beginning in 1975. Although the author was only 14, she was at the helm of a “1940s sixty-foot Bug-Eye ketch” sailing across the Pacific Ocean. It was her third such crossing in two years with members of her family, but that didn’t make it easy. Aside from the obvious dangers, she writes, she and her siblings also had to deal with her father, Bjorn, who plays a large role in this memoir; she writes of sexual abuse that began at an early age, regular mocking comments, and other disturbing behavior that continued until his death in a plane crash when the author was 19. The memoir covers the author’s life over a roughly 10-year period in which she faced various challenges, including a fraught marriage and a substance abuse problem for which she eventually sought help; in 1986, she notes, “I turned twenty-five while living in my car, drinking alone.” Nack compellingly describes her complex relationship with her father, whom she calls “the best and the worst father in the world”—someone who sent her and her sister Monica on an empowering wilderness survival program that they’d never forget, but also “never though incest was wrong,” according to the author’s mother, who also struggled with substance abuse issues. The author relates other troubles she faced in a similarly engaging way, and offers moments of humor, as when she writes of working at Jack in the Box as a teenager in San Diego: “Finally, I was good at something. How depressing that it was fast food.” Overall, it’s an undeniably intimate and unusual account.

A deeply personal and consistently engaging remembrance of a difficult young adulthood.