The Many Lives of Mama Love

A page-turning, funny and poignant memoir about Lara Love Hardin's journey from soccer mom to identity thief and opiate addict to New York Times bestselling ghostwriter, via a Californian prison.

No one expects the police to knock on the door of the million-dollar two-story home of the perfect cul-de-sac housewife. But soccer mom Lara Love Hardin has been hiding a shady secret: she is funding her heroin addiction by stealing her neighbors' credit cards.

Lara is convicted of thirty-two felonies and becomes inmate S32179. She finds that jail is a class system with a power structure that is somewhere between an adolescent sleepover party and?Lord of the Flies. Furniture is made from tampon boxes, and Snickers bars are currency. But Lara quickly learns the rules and brings love and healing to her fellow inmates as she climbs the social ladder and acquires the nickname "Mama Love," showing that jailhouse politics aren't that different from the PTA meetings she used to attend.

When she's released, she reinvents herself as a ghostwriter. Now, she's legally co-opting other people's identities and getting to meet Oprah, meditate with the Dalai Lama, and have dinner with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But the shadow of her past follows her. Shame is a poison worse than heroin-there is no way to detox. Lara must learn how to forgive herself and others, navigate life as a felon on probation, and prove to herself that she is more good than bad, among other essential lessons.

The Many Lives of Mama Love?is a heartbreaking and tender journey from shame to redemption, despite a system that makes it almost impossible for us to move beyond the worst thing we have ever done.

Review

Lara Love Hardin shares compelling and important truths in her beautifully told personal story. ― Piper Kerman, author of Orange is the New Black

Thrilling, funny, heart-breaking and moving. I'll return to this book when I need to be reminded of the power of the human spirit. ― David Sheff, author of Beautiful Boy

Hardin is an aptly named genius with a heart of gold. ― Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Compelling and timely. ― Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy

A hilarious and heart-breaking confession that will not let you go until it is done - and then it will haunt you. ― Lori Gottlieb, author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

A courageous and inspiring memoir ― Kirkus Reviews

A suburban mom weathers addiction, jail, and parole in this roller-coaster debut memoir... Hardin mixes despair and comedy in her evocative prose: "I carefully pick through the bottom-of-purse debris until I find some small brown chips.... I don't know if I'm smoking heroin or food crumbs or lint, but I feel the anxiety slowly leave my chest." This redemption story feels well earned.' ― Publishers Weekly

Grips you as suddenly as any psychological thriller... Readers will experience the lows and highs of addiction, incarceration and rehabilitation as Love Hardin assembles the pieces of her shattered life into something beautiful again in this inspiring chronicle. ― BookPage

'Laced with penetrating wit, written with unsparing honesty and manifesting irrepressible resilience, The Many Lives of Mama Love is a book to intrigue, enchant, instruct, entertain and inspire readers of all ages and backgrounds. It speaks to our common human experience of suffering and the healing that can follow.' ― Gabor Maté M.D., author of the New York Times bestseller, The Myth of Normal

About the Author

Lara Love Hardin is a literary agent and author. Previously co-CEO of Idea Architects, she is the founder of True Literary. Lara is a four-time New York Times bestselling co-writer, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Designing Your Life and the 2018 Oprah Book Club pick The Sun Does Shine, which she co-authored with Anthony Ray Hinton. In 2019 she won a Christopher Award for her work 'affirming the highest values of the human spirit', was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and shortlisted for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.