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The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing
By Lara Love Hardin
320 pages;
Simon & Schuster
No one expects the police to knock on the million-dollar, two-story home
of the perfect cul-de-sac housewife. But soccer mom Lara Love Hardin
has been hiding a shady secret: she is funding her heroin addiction by
stealing her neighbors' credit cards.
Lara is convicted of 32 felonies and becomes inmate S32179. She learns that jail is a
class system with a power structure that is somewhere between an
adolescent sleepover party and Lord of the Flies. Furniture is
made from tampon boxes and Snickers bars are currency. But Lara quickly
finds the rules and brings love and healing to her fellow inmates as she
climbs the social ladder to become the "shot caller," showing that
jailhouse politics aren't that different from the PTA meetings she used
to attend.
When she's released, she reinvents herself as a
ghostwriter. Now, she's legally co-opting other people's identities and
getting to meet Oprah, meditate with The Dalai Lama, and have dinner
with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But the shadow of her past follows her.
Shame is a poison worse than heroin—there is no way to detox. Lara must
learn how to forgive herself and others, navigate life as a felon on
probation, prove to herself that she is more good than bad, and much
more.
The Many Lives of Mama Love is a heartbreaking and
tender journey from shame to redemption, despite a system that makes it
almost impossible for us to move beyond the worst thing we have ever
done.
Published 02/27/2024