Overview

Perfect for fans of The Glass Castle and Educated, this raw, powerful memoir recounts one woman’s journey—from gritty 1970s Brooklyn to testosterone-fueled 1980s–1990s Wall Street and beyond—to reclaim truth, identity, and self-worth after trauma. A powerful memoir of trauma, resilience, and female empowerment, House of Pretend tells the story of a girl who, raised in the shadow of her father’s death by an emotionally abusive, narcissistic mother, learns early to perform, to please, and to pretend—and spends the rest of her life struggling to unlearn those behaviors. Determined to escape the silence and neglect of her childhood, Joanne claws her way into the male-dominated world of Wall Street as a young woman—only to find that success means nothing without self-worth. When her boss offers her a million dollars to have his child, she is forced to reckon with everything she’s buried: the deep ache of abandonment, years of chasing love in all the wrong places, and the belief that she’s undeserving of more. What follows is not a transformation into someone new but rather a fierce unmasking—a reclamation of the voice, worth, and identity she has had within her all along. Offering a gripping blend of raw emotion and biting clarity, House of Pretend is about what happens when a woman stops waiting to be saved and instead saves herself—with grit, honesty, and just the right amount of badassery.

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Reviews

""Joanne Redding's immensely satisfying and resonant memoir should be a classic for years to come. Touching on questions that are universal in the examination of her life, it's everything you want in a good read--rich, unexpected, funny, heartbreaking, and, ultimately, full of grace and wisdom.""--David Kirkpatrick, former president of Paramount Pictures and former production chief of Walt Disney Studios

Author Information

Joanne Redding grew up in Brooklyn and eventually made her way to Manhattan, then the suburbs of Westchester County, and finally Greenwich, CT. She holds a bachelor’s degree in French and a master’s in finance from NYU and is a certified Master Gardener with a degree in landscape design; over the years, she’s worked at an airport and an engineering firm, spent over fifteen years on Wall Street, and run her own landscape design business. The proud mom of two amazing young adults, Joanne shares her home in the New York City area with her two elderly but endlessly loved dogs.

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