18. In My Skin: a Memoir by Kate Holden

This extremely candid memoir by Australian Holden is about her years of heroin addiction and prostitution to support her growing habit. Born to an academic, comfortable middle-class family, Holden loved to read books and graduated college with honors. She always felt lonely and set apart from her circle of friends, and when a boyfriend tries heroin, she suddenly becomes hooked on the drug. After losing her beloved job at a bookstore (for leaving work to score heroin each lunch hour) she turns to the streets to support her habit, along with providing drugs for her boyfriend. She tries rehab a few times, has a boyfriend leave her when he decides to come clean, and slowly looses the support of her family when she constantly does drugs in their house and steals their money to buy more drugs. With no place to go and not making much money on the streets of Australia, she decides to work in a series of high-class brothels. It is during that time that she finally becomes clean and starts to put her life back together.

Drug addiction and prostitution receive a very honest look in this memoir. It tells readers of the dark realities of both worlds and how things go so wrong in people’s lives. It seems hard to believe that the author is only in her early thirties. For readers who liked James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces or Broken: My Story of Addiction and Redemption by William Cope Moyers.