Burn-it-Down Memoirs from Women Who Lived Their Truth

Pretend for a minute that you don't know the author of this dazzling memoir (which will require you to forget ever having seen her in Orange Is the New Black or Star Trek: Voyager). Instead, take author Kate Mulgrew for who she is: a woman with terrific wit, talent and courage. Her mother was an outspoken maverick with seven kids who once danced with Jack Kennedy, and painted at her easel in the basement—even as her children slapped Band-Aids over injuries requiring stitches, tried to bribe the teachers with concoctions of ketchup and mayonnaise or one got a job working as a cocktail waitress, as Mulgrew did, in order to earn enough money to run away to London at age 16. Her recollection of the antics in the packed family house called Derby Grange ("even very small children know paradise when they see it, and this was paradise") makes for lively, hilarious reading, but this is a writer unafraid of complexity, who tackles both her father's on-again, off-again relationship with the lovesick family housekeeper and the long, painful death of her favorite sister from a brain tumor. The real power of the book comes from Mulgrew's unexpected pregnancy (while working on a soap opera) and her decision to give up her baby to Catholic Charities. How Mulgrew staggers on afterwards, achieving phenomenal professional success, even as she mourns the loss of her daughter will stay with you.