Abandon Me

**Named One of the Best Books of the year by:** Esquire **,** Refinery29 **,** BookRiot **,** Medium, Electric Literature, The Brooklyn Rail, Largehearted Boy **,** The Coil **and** The Cut **.** **Winner of the Lambda Literary Jeanne Cordova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction ** **Finalist, Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography** **Finalist, Publishing Triangle’s Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction** **An Indie Next Pick** **For readers of Maggie Nelson and Leslie Jamison, a fierce and dazzling personal narrative that explores the many ways identity and art are shaped by love and loss.** In her critically acclaimed memoir, *Whip Smart* , Melissa Febos laid bare the intimate world of the professional dominatrix, turning an honest examination of her life into a lyrical study of power, desire, and fulfillment. In her dazzling *Abandon Me* , Febos captures the intense bonds of love and the need for connection — with family, lovers, and oneself. First, her birth father, who left her with only an inheritance of addiction and Native American blood, its meaning a mystery. As Febos tentatively reconnects, she sees how both these lineages manifest in her own life, marked by compulsion and an instinct for self-erasure. Meanwhile, she remains closely tied to the sea captain who raised her, his parenting ardent but intermittent as his work took him away for months at a time. Woven throughout is the hypnotic story of an all-consuming, long-distance love affair with a woman, marked equally by worship and withdrawal. In visceral, erotic prose, Febos captures their mutual abandonment to passion and obsession — and the terror and exhilaration of losing herself in another. At once a fearlessly vulnerable memoir and an incisive investigation of art, love, and identity, *Abandon Me* draws on childhood stories, religion, psychology, mythology, popular culture, and the intimacies of one writer’s life to reveal intellectual and emotional truths that feel startlingly universal.