Johansen Nack

For fans of Stephanie Thornton-Plymale’s American Daughter and Cea Sunrise Person’s North of Normal comes Leslie Johansen Nack’s emotional follow-up memoir about her battle with addiction following a traumatic childhood--and her inspiring journey toward healing and happiness.

In the mid-1970s, Leslie Nack’s family returned from sailing to French Polynesia and began the integration process into American life again, which included being tossed back and forth between an alcoholic, mentally ill mother and an abusive, overbearing father.

To find love and acceptance, Leslie chases a myth that throws her into the path of nefarious older men, where she eventually falls into drug and alcohol addiction. Her father dies in his plane in the jungles of Mexico when Leslie is nineteen, but his abuse lingers in her psyche. She spirals, her only solace her next fix--until, somehow, she finds the grace, despite her abjectly dysfunctional family background, to believe in her worth. This newfound self-love changes everything for her, and finally she is able to find her way to sobriety and recovery.

Raw and intense but ultimately hopeful, this sequel to the popular memoir Fourteen tells the rest of Nack’s turbulent--and incredible--story.

Leslie Johansen Nack’s debut, Fourteen: A Daughter’s Memoir of Adventure, Sailing, and Survival, received five indie awards. Her historical fiction novel The Blue Butterfly, A Novel of Marion Davies, has won six indie awards, including the 2023 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Gold in Historical Fiction. She has a degree in English literature from UCLA and is a member of The Authors’ Guild, The Historical Novel Society and the National Memoir Association. She lives outside Seattle with her husband. www.lesliejohansennack.com