A List of Things That Didn't Kill Me

In his searing debut memoir, Jason Schmidt explores the question of how a good kid overcomes a bad childhood in the tradition of Jeannette Walls's The Glass Castle. Noted drug addict Mark Schmidt didn't surprise his son when he came home one day to find him crawling around in a giant pool of blood. Things like that had been happening a lot since Mark was diagnosed with HIV. Jason's life with Mark was full of secrets - about drugs, crime, and sex. If the straights ever found out any of those secrets, the police would come. So the rule since Jason was in preschool was never to tell the straights anything.