'Somebody's Daughter' review: What happens when a father goes to prison

Ashley C. Ford's heart-wrenching memoir, "Somebody's Daughter," tells the story of a family that must shoulder the weight created by the absence of a parent. Ford's father was in jail for nearly 30 years, and her memoir painfully and poignantly shows us that life must go on. Her abusive mother became more volatile, and her grandmother tried to fill the void, while siblings drew closer to each other. They survived, but not without suffering.

The memoir begins with a phone call from Ford's mother, who passes on the news that her father soon will be released from jail. In the chapters that follow, Ford pieces together her childhood through intimate storytelling. You see the world through a child's eyes and feel the pain that a child feels. Sometimes her story makes you laugh out loud; sometimes it makes you weep. This is a soul-stirring tale of a child contending with "big feelings" and, later, a teenager becoming a woman.

There are moments when you wince and wish you could protect young Ashley from an unkind world; reassure her that she is beautiful, special and innocent; and keep her safe from the brutal experiences of physical and sexual violence. When she is raped by a boy from her school in the shed at her house, she describes floating away, out of her body, and being unable to let herself back inside. You want to gently take her hand and help her to find her way back to herself.

The blurred figure of Ford's father never falls entirely out of view. She longs to be his "favorite girl" and believes that he would understand her, protect her and love her unconditionally. She sears into her memory an old family photograph taken before he went to jail. After reading some of Ford's writing, her mother asks: "Why can't you ever write about the happy times we had? We had happy times too."

As a teenager and an adult, Ford is troubled by her body, which she feels has betrayed her by being "too big" and "inappropriate." Her outer self is mismatched with her inner emotional life. She grapples with agonizing feelings of insecurity, self-doubt and invisibility.

Her most difficult internal struggle is with her father, who committed heinous crimes: He raped two women. His absence has caused her "big feelings," and his crimes have made those feelings even bigger, leaving Ford emotionless and lost. When her grandmother tells her why her father has been in jail, Ford does not cry; instead, she tells herself "Control your breath, quiet your heart, die on the inside, only let them see life." In time, she sees life, too.

This is a story of redemption: Ford finds the courage to solve the mystery that is her father, to come to grips with his past and ultimately "to feel like somebody's daughter."

Perhaps the greatest contribution Ford makes is to offer her story — written in the most lively and lucid prose — in its most raw and unabridged form. By telling her truth so honestly and authentically, Ford invites us to tell ours, too.