Skip to main content

Look at You Now: My Journey from Shame to Strength

About the Book

Look at You Now: My Journey from Shame to Strength

For readers of Orange Is the New Black and The Glass Castle, a riveting memoir about a lifelong secret and a girl finding strength in the most unlikely place

In 1979, Liz Pryor is a seventeen-year-old girl from a good family in the wealthy Chicago suburbs. Halfway through her senior year of high school, she discovers that she is pregnant --- a fact her parents are determined to keep a secret from her friends, siblings and community forever. One snowy January day, after driving across three states, her mother drops her off at what Liz thinks is a Catholic home for unwed mothers --- but which is, in truth, a locked government-run facility for delinquent and impoverished pregnant teenage girls.

In the cement-block residence, Liz is alone and terrified, a fish out of water --- a girl from a privileged, sheltered background living amid tough, street-savvy girls who come from the foster care system or juvenile detention. But over the next six months, isolated and in involuntary hiding from everyone she knows, Liz develops a surprising bond with the other girls and begins to question everything she once held true. Told with tenderness, humor and an open heart, LOOK AT YOU NOW is a deeply moving story about the most vulnerable moments in our lives --- and how a willingness to trust ourselves can permanently change who we are and how we see the world.

Look at You Now: My Journey from Shame to Strength
by Liz Pryor

  • Publication Date: June 28, 2016
  • Genres: Memoir
  • Hardcover: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Random House
  • ISBN-10: 0812998006
  • ISBN-13: 9780812998009