I’ve always been a sucker for memoirs.

Our bookshelves are crammed with stories of those who relinquished the security of status quo to search for the good life back on the land or out on the water: Helen Nearing, Jean Hay Bright, Melissa Coleman, Louise Aldridge, Anne LaBastille, the list goes on and on. These are relics from the decade we lived in big-city suburbs, longing to find a way to Maine, and had to make do with vicarious versions of the adventures we craved.

But even beyond the Maine piece, there is something in so many of us that gravitates to writers who have the courage to examine and share their back stories. We find solace in learning that we’re not the only ones who have had our share of rock-bottom moments. We search for hope and something instructive in the details of how they resurrected themselves.

So I was eager to dig into “Good Girl: A Memoir,” by Mainer Sarah Tomlinson, which will hit store shelves April 21. At its core, the memoir recounts her lifelong quest to build a sense of self upon a foundation fractured by her estranged father – who contended with gambling addiction and other issues – while also trying to forge a relationship with him.

Born in 1976, Tomlinson spent her childhood on a rural enclave in Freedom, Maine, with her mother and stepfather. At age 15 she left for Bard College at Simon’s Rock before going on to get a graduate degree, and establishing herself as a journalist, music critic and ghost writer. Throughout her travels to Boston, Portland (the other one, in Oregon), and Los Angeles, she struggled to negotiate work, love, and friendship while also navigating the chasms her father bequeathed her by being so absent during her early years.

This might be a simpler task if he were completely out of her life and she was trying all this in the supportive safety net of family and friends.

But even as Tomlinson works to repair the internal damage her father did, she works hard to deepen her connection with him, and keep the distance she needs to protect the sense of wholeness she’s tried to build without him.

It’s a tall – if not impossible – order. And in the end, there is no tidy solution or even any helpful how-to – only the reassurance that peace is possible, even in the inconvenient sense of unconditional love that we have of the people who chronically let us down.

She writes that ultimately many of the burning questions about her father that have shaped her life aren’t answerable. They “would always be works in progress, just as my wound would never be completely erased, and it was all a part of my life’s labor,” she writes. Perhaps she embraces, by the end, the Zen proverb “The obstacle is the path.”

Tomlinson’s writing is vivid; she must have kept very detailed journals throughout her life. Her writing is so easy to digest – I read “Good Girl” in just two sittings – that I have to believe that she recited her manuscript aloud before pressing Send. Her deft style makes the story easy to absorb; it’s less like reading a book and more like listening to a friend confide in you.

Tomlinson commutes between Los Angeles and Brooklyn, writes for Marie Claire, Salon, Spin, The Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and other publications. She has ghostwritten nine books, including two uncredited NYT bestsellers. You can learn more about her at her website, sarahtomlinson.com, and follow her on Twitter @DuchessofRock.

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