The Bookie's Daughter

A provocative and candid memoir spanning the first nineteen years of the author's life, The Bookie's Daughter resonates with elements of Sopranos and Running with Scissors—zany, violent, and oh-so-human. Written by Heather Abraham, The Bookie’s Daughter is a wild ride through a childhood dominated by Big Al, the author’s larger-than-life bookie father, and Bonnie, her trigger-happy alcoholic mother. Devoted to their family yet in thrall to their prodigious addictions, they recklessly plunged their daughters into a dangerous life of crime. Join The Bookie’s Daughter in a perfect storm of adolescent angst, crime, and shocking adventures. Follow along as the author and her sister traverse a childhood where gambling, police raids, trials, public scorn, spitting Studda Bubbas, hitmen, IRA gunrunners, pedophiles, bodyguards, and midnight runs for illegal goods were considered routine. The narrative is twistedly entertaining, with a range of colorful wacky characters, as well as shockingly raw in its recognition of the destructive nature of dysfunctional family dynamics and parental addictions. Throughout a series of outrageous, oftentimes violent, misadventures, Abraham manages to conjure up loony vistas, thick with description and humorous acceptance.