A coming-of-age memoir about a professional truth seeker who reveals her own truths.

As a national crime reporter, the headlines upon which Melissa reports often mimic her personal life. Growing up in neighborhoods infested with criminals and gang members, Melissa and her brother, Mikey, tried to find their own identities in Northern California’s East Bay, a region known for its slow progression in race mixing. Forced to find ways to dodge threats as teens, Melissa and Mikey suffered pains of finding their way through the oppressive violence.

Mikey took refuge in joining a gang. Instead of feeling safe, he struggled to battle an unforeseen enemy: undiagnosed mental illnesses and because of it, debilitating addiction. Melissa escaped the Bay Area to ironically become a crime fighter chasing down criminals similar to the ones she grew up with; at times, her old and new worlds collide. She and her brother entrenched in crime but teetering on opposite lines, she spent her nights waiting for the calls saying he was in jail or dead.

This audiobook is a lesson in overcoming. Melissa takes personal tragedies along with the lessons she's learned from the thousands of victims she's interviewed who suffered life's worst tragedies and gives strong takeaways in every aspect of life for listeners to resonate with. Through Melissa and Mikey's abnormal upbringing, there are internal conflicts revealed to the listener in the rawest form illuminating what it's really like to drown in a loved one's addiction and spiral to the very bottom of mental illnesses. The consequences and decisions of these emotional warfares are shown from the perspectives of both sides.

A powerful, dramatic journey showing how one sibling can work toward finding the light of success and happiness as the other can't see a glimmer through the darkness. Love challenges will reveal great human strength.

Through her professional career, listeners will see how seeds of unjust treatment for women in the workplace are slowly planted and what happens when women bite back. There has never been a more relevant time to show the true weight news and crime reporters carry on the job. Sacrifices that affect us when the cameras turn off. At times, there are comical moments, when listeners will laugh out loud at her pains of being a single career woman trying to find love while working 12-hour days chasing after criminals and living in Hollywood, where a woman's strength isn't an attribute but rather a hindering quality for men.

This story is about making mistakes, embracing each and growing to share and connect with others. It's a story of now, the societal issues we face, the stigmas we must break down, and egos to dispel.