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Lara Love Hardin, author of The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing

No one expects the police to knock on 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 32 felonies. She learns that jail is a class system with a power structure that is somewhere between an adolescent sleepover party and LORD OF THE FLIES. But Lara brings love and healing to her fellow inmates as she climbs the social ladder to become the “shot caller.” 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.