Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn't Stop Praying (Among Other Things). This item is unavailable.Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn't Stop Praying (Among Other Things)

In this vibrant memoir, Abby Sher recounts her life with precision and humor as only a woman who is both a comedian and obsessive-compulsive can. The death of Abby’s father when she is eleven years old leaves a void that she fills with rituals: washing her hands, collecting litter, kissing her father’s photograph over and over. Then, with a child’s understanding of cause and effect, Abby begins to pray, certain that she can prevent further disaster. She carries the weight of this belief and the accompanying devotion to God through high school, college, and beyond, when it is joined by darker compulsions of anorexia and cutting.

Amen, Amen, Amen is an elegy to parents lost and to a youth consumed by grief and anxiety; it is a spiritual mystery about Abby’s search for answers and someone to guide her to them; and it is a romance about discovering the true nature of unconditional love. With remarkable candor and insight, Abby offers a brave and exquisitely written account of obsessive-compulsive disorder and the bounds and boundlessness of belief.

Abby Sher is a writer and performer whose work has appeared in Modern Love: 50 True and Extraordinary Tales of Desire, Deceit, and Devotion and Behind the Bedroom Door: Getting it, Giving it, Loving it, Missing it as well as in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Self, Jane, Elle, HeeB and Redbook. She is also the author of the young adult novel Kissing Snowflakes. Abby has written and performed for the Second City in Chicago and the Upright Citizen’s Brigade and Magnet Theater in New York. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.