Stories of past family grandeur populated Jeanne Darst's childhood. But her parents' enduring inability to deal with everyday realities laid the foundation for numerous debacles. With snappy, cut-to-the-quick language, Darst's memoir chronicles her family's disintegration and her bumpy journey through the writing life and route to sobriety.

The author's father, a reporter in St. Louis, forgoes his steady newspaper job and moves the family to New York in order to better position himself for writing the great American novel. It doesn't sell. Neither does his second attempt. Ultimately, he stops writing and just talks about writing.

Darst's mother, once a celebrated child equestrian, later a wild rich girl, attended debutante balls and college in the East. "My parents slowly lost everything and fell apart," Darst writes. "As an adult it's hard not to wonder how people with their kind of talent, charm, intelligence and privileged backgrounds could wind up like them."

As a young adult and aspiring writer, Darst realizes she embodies the worst characteristics of both her parents. Her life "had become: a drinker's joke, risky, painful stunts meant to entertain those around me but which felt sad and pointless in the morning." She deftly describes the sad and often hilarious details of her unorthodox life and her strategy for finally facing reality.