Stray: Memoir of a Runaway

by Tanya Marquardt

Overview

Brutal and beautiful, Stray is the true story of a girl who runs away and finds herself.

After growing up in a dysfunctional and emotionally abusive home, Tanya Marquardt runs away on her sixteenth birthday. Her departure is an act of rebellion and survival—whatever she is heading toward has to be better than what she is leaving behind.

Struggling with her inner demons, Tanya must learn to take care of herself during two chaotic years in the working-class mill town of Port Alberni, followed by the early-nineties underground goth scene in Vancouver, British Columbia. She finds a chosen family in her fellow misfits, and the bond they form is fierce and unflinching.

Told with raw honesty and strength, Stray reveals Tanya’s fight to embrace the vulnerable, beguiling parts of herself and heal the wounds of her past as she forges her own path to a new life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781503949140
Publisher:	Amazon Publishing
Publication date:	09/01/2018
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	710,955
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Tanya Marquardt is an award-winning performer and the author of ten plays, which have been produced across Canada and the United States. Transmission was published in the Canadian Theatre Review, and Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep was the subject of an episode of NPR’s Invisibilia. A Hertog Fellow and graduate of the MFA creative writing program at Hunter College, Tanya splits her time between Vancouver, British Columbia, and Brooklyn, New York. Stray is her first book.

Editorial Reviews

06/11/2018
Marquardt’s memoir is a brutally honest reflection on her fraught adolescence and journey of self-realization. Marquardt relays the dysfunctional circumstances of her family in British Columbia, focusing on the complicated relationship between her parents: “The tension between Mom and Dad was palpable even though they lived in different towns... and I acting as go-between for two people who hated each other.” Marquardt left home at 16 to live with various friends, and made every attempt to avoid returning to her mother’s home, even though she tried to understand her: “I played like I hated her, but... I would go through her vanity and jewelry box... because I wanted evidence of her, of who she was.” In Vancouver she found outcasts and peers of similar backgrounds: “When I was with Lana, Garret, and Adam, it was like I was living in a microcosm, a world hidden within a world hidden within a world.... We were a bunch of kids playing at being Lost Boys, looking for our version of Neverland.” Hers is an entirely relatable teenage journey: at once sensitive and selfish, desperate and brash. This is an edgy memoir about a young woman trying to understand herself. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Marquardt’s memoir is a brutally honest reflection on her fraught adolescence and journey of self-realization…Hers is an entirely relatable teenage journey: at once sensitive and selfish, desperate and brash. This is an edgy memoir about a young woman trying to understand herself.” —Publishers Weekly

“The highly expressive narrative is often brutal and raw, a combination of truth and penance, and it feels like a confession leading toward sanity and forgiveness.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Her coming-of-age memoir tells a tender, heartbreaking story of a young woman who became an adult sooner than she had to.” —HelloGiggles

“[A] compelling voice…Stray is the story of how one young woman was [able to] embrace her own vulnerabilities and heal the wounds of the past as she forges ahead into adulthood.” —The Advocate

“The freedom Marquardt finds over the course of Stray’s narrative is a double-edged sword…It renders the alienation, fear, and anxiety that so many of us experience during our teenage years with a fine hand, while also giving clear voice to her own truths.” —Full Stop

From the Publisher

2018-06-18
A performer and playwright looks back on her dysfunctional adolescence and her decision to run away from home.Living in a small town with her unsupportive mother, stepfather, siblings, and stepsiblings was just not working for Marquardt, so, at the age of 16, while her mother was out of the house, she packed her bags, called a cab, and left. This was the start of two tumultuous years during which she lived on the couches of friends, shared bedrooms with others, and lived part of the time with her father. She continued to attend school and to write whenever she could, a habit that projected her into the acting and writing world, while also smoking cigarettes obsessively and getting blackout drunk whenever possible. She entered the goth scene in Vancouver and hung out at bars and dance clubs, where she was exposed to the seedier side of life; S&M was common in the basement hangout she frequented with her group of loyal friends. Marquardt's tale is gritty and sordid, full of vivid details that make palpable the experiences of a teenage girl searching for her place in the world. She spares little as she describes the physical and verbal abuse she endured and the fear, anger, and confusion caused by her family and others. "I loved to write, and Mom's rejection of such a raw and exposed part of me was worse that if she'd slapped me," writes the author, "and like a fuel to a fire, it caused a rage that burned inside my belly….[W]hen confronted with a need that contradicted hers, or with emotional turmoil that she couldn't control, she shut off." Marquardt also skillfully communicates her desires and dreams as she approached adulthood.The highly expressive narrative is often brutal and raw, a combination of truth and penance, and it feels like a confession leading toward sanity and forgiveness.

Kirkus Reviews