I've spent my whole life trying to get over having had Nikki for a mother, and I have to say that from day one after she died, I liked having a dead mother much more than having an impossible one. [p. 47]

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.