The Bookie’s Daughter

“The Bookie’s Daughter” reads like a car chase scene from a summer blockbuster. Heather Abraham’s memoir of a criminal childhood filled with intimate violence is brazen and life is stranger than fiction hilarious. Her insanely alcoholic mother Bonnie survived a violent childhood to become a violent mother incapable of tenderness. Big Al, Abraham’s father, was a real life giant with colossal addictions to explosives, gambling, food and adventure. Al’s “dark passengers” kept him in constant pursuit of money and his family in constant chaos and danger. The crew of criminals that populated “family” life for Heather included Appalachian pyromaniacs, IRA gun runners, pimps, pedophiles, skin runners, assassins and a hellfire damnation evangelical con man. This memoir is a love letter, indictment and writ of pardon for a certifiably insane and addicted family. Yet, “The Bookie’s Daughter” is not sad tale of the destruction of a young life. From a young age Abraham was determined not to be a casualty of her dysfunctional life, armed with a superhuman sense of humor she slogged her way out of the dismal circumstances of her family and the town of Jeanette, PA. Through hard living, hard work and shameless self appraisal Heather lives a tale of real life ordinary human triumph. “The Bookie’s Daughter” is a tale of the most idiolect form of American self determinism, just in time for winter reading.