House of Pretend: A Memoir

Perfect for fans of The Glass Castle and Educated, this raw, powerful memoir recounts one woman's journey--from gritty 1970s Brooklyn to testosterone-fueled 1980s-1990s Wall Street and beyond--to reclaim truth, identity, and self-worth after trauma.A powerful memoir of trauma, resilience, and female empowerment, House of Pretend tells the story of a girl who, raised in the shadow of her father's death by an emotionally abusive, narcissistic mother, learns early to perform, to please, and to pretend--and spends the rest of her life struggling to unlearn those behaviors.Determined to escape the silence and neglect of her childhood, Joanne claws her way into the male-dominated world of Wall Street as a young woman--only to find that success means nothing without self-worth. When her boss offers her a million dollars to have his child, she is forced to reckon with everything she's buried: the deep ache of abandonment, years of chasing love in all the wrong places, and the belief that she's undeserving of more. What follows is not a transformation into someone new but rather a fierce unmasking--a reclamation of the voice, worth, and identity she has had within her all along.Offering a gripping blend of raw emotion and biting clarity, House of Pretend is about what happens when a woman stops waiting to be saved and instead saves herself--with grit, honesty, and just the right amount of badassery.