Half a Life: A Memoir brilliantly subverting the conventions of

brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West

Portrayed by Mantel with pathos and terrific energy

But in 1965

Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink--a dark reminder that we often don't see a cataclysm coming until it's too late

Half a Life: A Memoir brilliantly subverting the conventions ofUnflinchingly honest, moving, and funny, "Half a Life" shows how a girl without means or promise and with only a loving mother, chutzpah, a bit of fraud, and a lot of luck turned into somebody. In 1964 the Ciment family left middle class Montreal for the fringe desert communities of Los Angeles, where their always unstable father lost the last vestiges of his sanity. Terrified and broke, in a world he could neither understand nor control, he came