Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.

2010. 1983. ISBN 0-679-43520-4.

Based in the San Francisco Bay Area her nonfiction works are largely autobiographical. Marked by their self-deprecating humor and openness Lamott's writings cover such subjects as alcoholism single motherhood depression and Christianity.