The daughter of a wounded, book-addicted mother and a bipolar, alcoholic father, Dawn Bennett Robson documents her haphazard, often poverty-stricken, and at times wickedly funny Southern childhood. Part coming-of-age memoir, part family saga, the book chronicles the secrets, foibles, and struggles of the author, her parents, her grandmother, and other relatives—generations of unique characters for whom trauma was just another day ending in Y.

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From a cramped trailer in North Carolina to the crowded streets of New York City, I Hope to Die on the Dance Floor of the Jack Tarr Hotel is also a memory-lane stroll through the turbulent 1960s and ’70s, when innocence clashed with the Sexual Revolution, the Civil Rights Movement, feminism, and gay liberation.

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A roller-coaster ride of storytelling, it details the cumulative trauma and troubled relationships that opened the door to the author’s own mental illness, and the journey she took to healing, wholeness, and forgiveness.