1. Joanie Starr

Above: My mother, in the publicity photo made for her nightclub appearances, circa 1961.

MOMENT STANDS APART in my memory, in fact, the actual moment my novels were born. I was descending a snow-dusted slope east of Cleveland, having just walked away from my mother’s graveside. This woman who had been gifted in so many ways had, a few days prior, died lonely and alone, leaving a mere handful of people to see her off. And as I reached the bottom of the hill, I was suddenly struck by the tragedy of it all but also with a sense of obligation, the sense that I would have to tell this story so that others might not make the same mistakes she had.

More distant memories stand in stark contrast to that day we buried her. For instance, one from when I was around 8, sitting on the floor only inches from big audio speakers, speakers my mother’s trio of musicians had brought to our home in order to practice, and feeling, not just hearing, their music push against me like a tidal wave, threatening to topple me over backwards on the living room floor.

And another memory from around that same time: her disappearing after dinner into her bedroom, then emerging minutes later magically transformed, like a beautiful butterfly, into the most glamorous being I had ever seen. She was walking out the door to her part-time job, singing in a nightclub in East Liverpool, Ohio. I had no idea that in that moment she was opening the door to disaster.

Singing wasn’t just a way for my mother to escape the tensions in our home. She had talent. But in testing the boundaries of her freedom, she also became the moth drawn to the flame, to eventually be seduced by a man with mob