The Black Spot

Linda can "see" bad things that will happen to those closest to her, including death, but nothing warns her of her own misfortunes.  Her mother suffers from serial promiscuity and social drunkenness, always wanting to be the perfect wife and mother, but alternates between beating dark secrets out of Linda and beating sense into her.  Her father is a Lothario, who suffers from the handicaps of voluntary alcoholism and financial incompetence, but loves animals and at least one of his four children.

Readers who enjoyed Jenny Lawson's side-splitting, Furiously Happy and Jeanette Walls' brilliant memoir of struggle and hardship, The Glass Castle, should enjoy the snarky humor and moving testimony about a triumphant coming to terms with her own "backstory".  Linda seeks to laugh at the darkness and know she is loved--isn't that part of everyone's struggle?