Allison Moorer - Blood: A Memoir

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T O LAURA NOLAN , for your belief in this story and in my ability to tell it, and for your constant encouragement, invaluable guidance, and abundant grace.

To Renee Sedliar, for seeing me and what I saw, and for making that vision more beautiful with your own keen eye and endless sensitivity.

To Robert Polito, for not only adding so much richness to my life as an artist, but for also helping me find a structure for this story.

To Steve Earle, for the example with a capital E.

To Danny Goldberg, for the early reads, encouragement, and important introductions.

To Jessica Doran, for invaluable and loving childcare.

To Jane Smith Courtois and Katharine Moorer Henson, for filling in the blanks.

To Leon Harris, for the stories about Daddy.

To Anthony Arnove, for being a great friend and advisor.

To Anna Devries, for being the first person to suggest I could do such a bold thing as write, and for showing up when I finally did.

To Dr. Maya Angelou, for the nudge.

To Shelby Moorer, for the memories shared and otherwise, and for your never-ending encouragement and fiery faith.

To Hayes Carll, for quiet confidence when I didnt have it, first reads, patience, and most of all, for your love.

To John Henry Earle, for being the reason.

ALLISON MOORER is an American writer and singer/songwriter who has released ten critically acclaimed albums. She has been published in American Songwriter, Guernica, No Depression, Literary Hub, and The Bitter Southerner, and has been nominated for Academy, Grammy, Americana Music Association, and Academy of Country Music awards. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and lives in Nashville. You can learn more about her on her website: www.AllisonMoorer.com.

[Moorers] written this book like a symphony. It is expansive, and its three parts feel like movements. Moorer fills them with prose that has the sharp honesty of the greatest songwriters.

The Bitter Southerner

Allison Moorer is known for songs of ragged, poetic honestyand for the emotional clarity of her country western ballads. Her debut memoir exhibits these qualities and more. Moorer eases into the heat of memory and trauma and returns with a tale of sisterly love and protection, of self-examination, recalling the ways she learned to avoid her alcoholic fathers tempestuous rages. A series of riffs on family objects gives this intense, necessary book room to breathe before it brings yet more truth to a childhood more than survived.

Literary Hub
(one of the most anticipated books of 2019)

Grit and grace, beauty and pain, on every wise page. Allison Moorer has given us a memoir as bloody, rich, and complex as red Alabama clay.

Alice Randall,
author of The Wind Done Gone

Blood is the most vulnerable work youre likely to read for quite some time.

Rick Bass,
author of For a Little While

Written with brave, clear-eyed compassion for all involved, Allison Moorers Blood is an astonishing and moving meditation on family inheritance and acceptance. Despite her familys singularly tragic circumstances, Moorer tells a universal story about the things our parents pass down to uswhat we learn to be grateful for, what we release ourselves from, and what we simply leave alone.

Jennifer Palmieri,
author of Dear Madam President