Sarah Thyre started out a middle child, in a middle-class Roman Catholic family, in the middle of Louisiana. Barely out of nappies, she decided that the middle wasn't all it was cracked up to be. But socioeconomic forces beyond her control and the violent struggles between her parents more often kept her eating fried eggs and pasta, feeling like a criminal on the lam. Thyre paints her early life with merciless, razor-sharp prose, braced with the best kind of humour: the kind that makes readers laugh so hard, it keeps them from crying.