By Sue Monk Kidd
272 pages; HarperOne
Available at: Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound

Written before her fictional best-seller, The Secret Life of Bees, this memoir "gives voice to the ways in which we experience a disconnect with the culture in which we were raised," says Ashley Judd, who sees similarities between herself and Kidd: "Like me, Sue is a Southern Christian woman born and raised in a household that revolves around the church." The most resonant moment for Judd is one that evokes the contradictory ways society sees women—in a scene where Kidd is admiring her teenage daughter diligently stocking a shelf at the drugstore where she works. "Suddenly two men walk by and one says, 'Now that's how I like to see a woman—on her knees.' Kidd realizes that her daughter was one particular woman in that moment, and she was also every woman. It was amazing."

— As told to Sara Nelson