Devastated by the sudden disconnection from the man she thought of as her father, and the rejection from her birth father that followed, a young Acamea Deadwiler finds herself on a lonesome path disturbed by the chaos of mental illness, poverty, and violence.
Daddy's Little Stranger delves into the captivating journey of a girl's life, shaped by various forms of neglect. Forced to navigate both tense and tender interactions with her mother's boyfriends, Acamea mourns the idea of a father as much as she does the father figures she once knew. She arms herself with resentment and emotional distance for protection.
"From the opening heartbreaking chapter to its final poignant pages, Acamea Deadwiler's Daddy's Little Stranger artfully demonstrates a simple but often overlooked fact: memoir never simply reproduces the past. Rather, it brings the past to life by exploring our relationship to memory itself. Her own earliest memories are marked by formative experiences with a troubled mother's "nervous breakdown," haunted by a parade of father figures, among them her absent biological father, Champ, who hovers like a specter throughout her life. Daddy's Little Stranger does not follow the familiar, triumphal storyline of overcoming difficult circumstances by refusing to be broken by them. Through masterful prose, keen observation, and vulnerable self-reflection, Deadwiler finds narrative balance, reconciling the pain of her childhood and offering the reader the greatest gift that art has to offer: wisdom."
"Acamea Deadwiler's Daddy's Little Stranger is a powerful and deeply felt memoir of family, longing, estrangement, complicated love, and what ties us to ourselves. Deadwiler's writing is stunningly intimate, reflective, and honest—"I put my foot in the revolving door of father figures, stopped it from spinning." From childhood to adulthood, Daddy's Little Stranger searches for connection, replete with pink Reeboks and #GirlDad tags. Deadwiler's book curled up in my heart and soothed me in my own fatherless, daughterly ache, whispering "it's okay." I loved every tender moment of this memoir and I know you will too."
