Grand

Emmy Award–winning writer Sara Schaefer’s hilariously honest memoir follows her “on this wild river descent into the Grand Canyon and her own secret family history. This is a Class 1000 Rapids of a memoir and I urge you to take the ride” (John Hodgman, author of Vacationland). Perfect for fans of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened.

When Sara Schaefer is in first grade, her father warns her to always tell the truth because one lie leads to another and soon you will find yourself in a hole you can’t escape. A few years later, the Schaefer family is completely upended when it’s revealed that their grand life is based on a lie. Her parents become pariahs in their upper middle class community and go from non-religious people to devout church members. The idea of good and evil as binary, opposed forces is a lesson she never forgets.

The year she turns forty, Sara decides to take each member of her family on a one-on-one vacation culminating with a whitewater rafting journey through the Grand Canyon with her sister. The only problem is she’s terrified of rafting. Along the way, she grapples with unresolved grief over the death of her mother and the family scandal that changed the trajectory of her life.

“Funny, sweet, heartbreaking, vulnerable, and powerfully written” (Moshe Kasher, author of Kasher in the Rye), Grand is “a wise, funny acknowledgment that we are not always in control—and that growth is most likely to happen when we let go” (BookPage).

Sara Schaefer is a stand-up comedian and writer. She was the cohost of MTV’s Nikki & Sara Live and has written for numerous television shows including The Fake News with Ted Nelms and The Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Sara’s solo show Little White Box debuted to a sold-out run at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and her Comedy Central Stand-Up Presents special premiered in 2019. She lives in Los Angeles.