The reflections of authors who share their personal thoughts and struggles make fascinating cold-weather reading. Borrow a memoir from the Lititz Public Library.
Godspeed by Casey Legler
One of the fastest swimmers in the world, as a teenager the author was also an alcoholic, isolated from her family and incapable of forming lasting connections with those around her.
All Happy Families by Jeanne McCulloch
On a mid-August weekend in 1983, as two families assembled for a wedding at a family mansion on the beach of East Hampton, the father of the bride suffered a massive stroke from alcohol withdrawal, creating long-lasting effects on each family.
All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
Born severely premature and placed for adoption by her Korean parents, the author was raised by a white family in a sheltered Oregon town, facing prejudice and trying to find her identity as an Asian American.
Fashion Climbing by Bill Cunningham
Leaving his Irish Boston suburb home and dropping out of Harvard to pursue a dream career as part of the New York fashion scene, the author became a designer and leading photographer in the late 1970s.
A Girl’s Guide to Missiles: Growing Up in America’s Secret Desert by Karen Piper
The author grew up amidst the Cold War culture of the Mojave Desert’s China Lake Missile Range, created during WWII and shrouded in secrecy and fear.
The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
Wry and hilarious diary tells what happened when the author purchased Scotland’s largest second-hand bookstore with over one hundred thousand books in a glorious old house in a tiny, beautiful town by the sea.
The Hundred Story Home: A Memoir of Finding Faith in Ourselves and Something Bigger by Kathy Izard
An unlikely meeting with a formerly-destitute writer inspired a graphic designer, wife and mother of four to quit her job and take on the challenge of building housing for the homeless.
Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth by Sarah Smarsh
A turbulent childhood and the forces of cyclical poverty solidified the author’s family as part of the working poor, a story that illustrates the class divide in our country and myths about people thought to be less because they earn less.
I Should Have Honor: A Memoir of Hope and Pride in Pakistan by Khalida Brohi
Learning that her cousin had been murdered for falling in love with a man who was not her childhood-betrothed in a tradition known as “honor killing”, the author was inspired to begin a globe-spanning career as an activist.
Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot
Having survived a dysfunctional upbringing and hospitalized for post-traumatic stress and bipolar disorder, the author was given a notebook to write her way out of painful memories and discover her own voice.
Monsoon Mansion by Cinelle Barnes
Growing up in a stately home reflecting her mother’s social aspirations and the excessive evidence of her father’s self-made success, the author’s storybook life was destroyed when a monsoon hit, her father left and her fantasy childhood disappeared.
Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living by Karen Auvinen
During a difficult time, the author fled to a primitive cabin in the Rockies to live in solitude as a writer, but when fire incinerated every work she had ever written she embarked on a journey to reconcile her desire to be alone with her need for community.
A Little Piece of Light: A Memoir of Hope, Prison and Life Unbound by Donna Hylton
In 1986, at the age of nineteen, the author took part in a horrific act and was sentenced twenty-five years to life for kidnapping and second-degree murder, ultimately facing the truth about the crime with the help of the family she found inside prison and emerging as a leading advocate for criminal justice reform.
No Way Home: A Memoir of Life on the Run by Tyler Wetherall
In 1985, the author’s parents went on the run with three young children, travelling across Europe and assuming different identities until on her twelfth birthday, Scotland Yard captured her drug-trafficking father on the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia.
November 16, 2018