Maybe This Will Save Me
A Memoir of Art, Addiction and Transformation
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
*NATIONAL BESTSELLER*
*An Autostraddle Most Anticipated Queer Book*
“I’m determined to get to know the real Tommy, to trace the shape of my scars.”
For years, Tommy Dorfman turned her back on her thoughts and emotions, hoping they’d simply go away.
After a lifetime of confusion, she finally gained clarity around her gender and began to transition.
But there were still parts of herself she’d locked away, elements of her story that she needed, for the first time, to fully confront.
She sought guidance in a tarot deck.
Maybe This Will Save Me is Tommy's story, told the cards of that tarot pull. For the first time, she opens up about:
growing up the youngest of five children while grappling with her identity the turbulent she spent as a teenager, numbed by drugs and alcohol her early aspirations of stardom and the hard fought path she forged to get there the long night that led her to finally seek treatment for addiction her breakout role in 13 Reason Why the relationships that shaped her
Maybe This Will Save Me is a luminously written, bracingly honest, and structurally audacious memoir of an artist whose vision transcends mediums.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Actor Dorfman debuts with a beguiling if inchoate memoir of youthful confusion about relationships, boundaries, and gender. Dorfman was born into a large, loving, and well-off Georgia family in 1992, and her coming-out—first as a gay teen, then as a trans woman—was met with warmth. But that didn't shield her from the trauma of having sex with older men as a teenager, nor from the impact of drinking and doing drugs simply because she didn't know "what else to do." Outwardly, Dorfman did plenty else: she studied theater, starred in Netflix's 13 Reasons Why, and married a man who proved to be more of a friend than a true love. All the while, she felt profoundly unmoored, and her path toward sobriety—which began with a 21-year-old Dorfman googling "celebrity rehab fancy" and ended with a spiritual awakening—provides the otherwise diffuse narrative with an organizing principle. Unfortunately, despite Dorfman's self-awareness, considerable charm, and strong prose, the book's diaristic, nonlinear structure doesn't generate much momentum. There's wisdom here in places, but it fails to take flight.
