{"product_id":"2940169179408","title":"A Piece of Cake: A Memoir","description":"There are shelves of memoirs about overcoming the death of a parent, childhood abuse,   rape, drug addiction, miscarriage, alcoholism, hustling, gangbanging, near-death   injuries, drug dealing, prostitution, or homelessness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Cupcake Brown survived all   these things before she'd even turned twenty.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e And that's when things got interesting...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e You have before you the strange, heart-wrenching, and exhilarating tale of a   woman named Cupcake. It begins as the story of a girl orphaned twice over, once by   the death of her mother and then again by a child welfare system that separated her   from her stepfather and put her into the hands of an epically sadistic foster parent.   But there comes a point in her preteen years-maybe it's the night she first tries   to run away and is exposed to drugs, alcohol, and sex all at once-when Cupcake's   story shifts from a tear-jerking tragedy to a dark comic blues opera. As Cupcake's   troubles grow, so do her voice and spirit. Her gut-punch sense of humor and eye for   the absurd, along with her outsized will, carry her through a fateful series of events   that could easily have left her dead.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Young Cupcake learned to survive by turning   tricks, downing hard liquor, partying like a rock star, and ingesting every drug   she could find while hitchhiking up and down the California coast. She stumbled into   gangbanging, drug dealing, hustling, prostitution, theft, and, eventually, the best   scam of all: a series of 9-to-5 jobs. But Cupcake's unlikely tour through the cubicle   world was paralleled by a quickening descent into the nightmare of crack cocaine   use, till she eventually found herself living behind a Dumpster. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Astonishingly,   she turned it around. With the help of a cobbled together family of eccentric fellow   addicts and \"angels\"-a series of friends and strangers who came to her aid at pivotalmoments-she   slowly transformed her life from the inside out.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eA Piece of Cake\u003c\/i\u003e is unlike any   memoir you'll ever read. Moving and almost transgressive in its frankness, it is   a relentlessly gripping tale of a resilient spirit who took on the worst of contemporary   urban life and survived it with a furious wit and unyielding determination. Cupcake   Brown is a dynamic and utterly original storyteller who will guide you on the most   satisfying, startlingly funny, and genuinely affecting tour through hell you'll ever   take.","brand":"Penguin Random House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47097785745648,"sku":"2940169179408","price":24.96,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940169179408_p0.jpg?v=1763764687","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940169179408","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}