New York Times bestselling author Lara Love Hardin recounts her
slide from soccer mom to opioid addict to jailhouse shot-caller and her
unlikely comeback as a highly successful ghostwriter in this harrowing,
hilarious, no-holds-barred memoir.
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 thirty-two 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.
