The memoir has become so commonplace as to be almost cliché, so it takes a special tell-all tome to grab wide-spread interest. I think I may have found a winner, though, in poet David Lovelace’s engaging, bittersweet memories of growing up in a family beset with bipolar disorder. Lovelace turns his amused eye toward himself and his family with a touching humor bred of the need to roll-with-it or be rolled over in his family’s odd antics.

From the stunning family portrait that graces the cover – a testimony to the fashion horror that was the ’70s – it’s obvious you’re treading into unstable territory. Lovelace does not hold back, diving into a description of finding his father in a full-blown manic episode, with his mother lying unconscious on the bedroom floor from a possible stroke. A horror of a picture, to be sure, but the author manages to convey the dark corners of bi-polar disorder from a tender, understanding place. It’s truly a brilliant look behind a screen most of us could never breach.

Scattershot Cover