Description

Cinder Girl sits in the rarest class of memoira towering literary triumph which melds searing and tragic personal history with an incredible story of resilience hope and civic successGrowing up on welfare food stamps and Greyhound buses Holly Thompson Rehder quit school at fifteen to help take care of her mother and younger sister after a devastating car accident Getting married and pregnant soon thereafter like so many other young girls caught in the povertycycle Holly decided that the life she had been born into was not what she intended to give her childBut unlike others who wind up mired in a lifetime of poverty dysfunction and despair Holly used her resourcefulness faith and sheer stubborn American grit to fight her way out of the gutterTwo decades later she was a successful businesswoman And today she is a rising political star who serves as an inspiration to young women across the state of Missouriand indeed the entire nationall while never forgetting where she came from She worked her butt off to help so many others born into seemingly helpless circumstancesAs a rare lawmaker who speaks candidly from raw personal experience in Cinder Girl Rehder rises above standard political prose to provide an unvarnished look inside the worst of American povertythose living in the margins Rehder challenges us to recall the plight of those far less fortunate who struggle without the opportunities most of us take for granted