This memoir was just obscenely lauded before I even had a chance to crack it open. This unflinching recounting of the kinds of secrets and struggles most of us have a hard time sharing with anyone is riveting and rewarding. Expect hard truths about America, about societal violence and family violence, about family and art and identity. There's a through-line about the value of reading and writing, but it's a bruising account from start to finish.

Leymon and I grew up in the same town at the same time, but his skill as a writer showed me in new clarity how different his experience as a black youth in Mississippi in the 80s and 90s was than mine as a white one. I remember getting hooked into this immediately the day I listened to the first chapter. I was hiking around one of the more scenic spots in all of Oregon, Crater Lake, as I pressed play. About five minutes in, the clouds descended and it began to hail. Somehow it was fitting.

This is one of those books you finish and think: there isn't a person in America who shouldn't read this. Or, perhaps even better, listen to the author read his own text in the audiobook (this short piece written while recording the audiobook can give you a flavor for Leymon's flinty, beautiful but unvarnished prose).