Cheryl Diamond

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“A beyond-harrowing memoir . . .  Diamond's tale might just be the most mind-blowing of them all.”
—Booklist, starred review

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"A riveting tale of resilience."

— PEOPLE Magazine selection for Best New Book

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Winner of the Library Guild of America Gold Standard award

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"A transfixing chronicle . . . Eloquent and bracing, Diamond's story will haunt readers long after the last page."

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— Publishers Weekly, starred review

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"It's shocking roller coaster ride of a story that shares secrets of life on the run, but also asks big questions about what family means and who we truly are, no matter what the name on any passport might say."

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— Town & Country Magazine

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“Nowhere Girl is a courageous, heart-breaking, and beautifully written story of a girl doing everything in her power to protect the ones she loves. She is Baby James Bond.”

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—Paul Haggis, Academy Award-winning writer/director of Crash, Million Dollar Baby, and Casino Royale

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“Diamond has a powerful story to tell . . . she takes the reader on a gripping ride . . . The tension isn't whether the father will be caught by whomever is chasing him, but whether the daughter will break away from the web of  lies woven around her . . How does one recognise truth from fiction? And how does one escape one´s childhood? Diamond raises as many questions as she answers, as the best books do.”

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— New York Journal of Books

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"Pulse-pounding, breathtaking; it is staggering how wonderful, terrifying and brilliant this book is. Nowhere Girl is a testament to bravery."​

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— Wiley Cash, New York Times bestselling author of A Land More Kind Than Home

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 “This memoir is proof that truth really is stranger than fiction.”

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—A CrimeReads pick for Most Anticipated Crime Book of 2021

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"By the age of nine, I will have lived in more than a dozen countries, on five continents, under six assumed identities. I’ll know how a document is forged, how to withstand an interrogation, and most important, how to disappear . . ."

 

To the young Cheryl Diamond, life felt like one big adventure, whether she was hurtling down the Himalayas in a rickety car or mingling with underworld fixers. Her family appeared to be an unbreakable gang of five. One day they were in Australia, the next South Africa, the pattern repeating as they crossed continents, changed identities, and erased their pasts. What Diamond didn’t yet know was that she was born into a family of outlaws fleeing from the highest international law enforcement agencies, a family with secrets that would eventually catch up to all of them.

By the time she was in her teens, Diamond had lived dozens of lives and lies, but as she grew, love and trust turned to fear and violence, and her family—the only people she had in the world—began to unravel. She started to realize that her life itself might be a big con, and the people she loved, the most dangerous of all. With no way out and her identity burned so often that she had no proof she even existed, all that was left was a girl from nowhere.

 

Diamond´s unforgettable memoir is a chilling, clear-sighted, and surprisingly humor-filled testament to a childhood lost and an adulthood found. With its page-turning candor about forged passports and midnight escapes, this is, in the end, the searing story of how lies can destroy a family and how truth can set us free. Like The Glass Castle meets Catch Me If You Can, Nowhere Girl is an impossible-to-believe true story of self-discovery and triumph.

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