About the book:

The hybrid flash memoir Scrap: Salvaging a Family explores the stain of childhood fear and anxiety on the adult spirit and the experience of reconciling with an aging or dying parent. A daughter has grown up in a household with an angry and abusive father. He keeps the secret of his biological father’s identity from his daughter for decades. When the elderly man faces his mortality, he finally names his father. The more the daughter learns about her father’s early life and origins, the more she understands him which leads to forgiveness for the past.

My thoughts:

Scrap: Salvaging a Family is an intimate retelling of the author’s childhood and her experience with growing up with an angry and abusive father. The memoir is told both through the lens of a child as well as an adult woman. The writing is phenomenal in the sense that the reader feels instantly transported to different places and times in the author’s life. When Luanne was talking about moments in her childhood, I truly felt like I was within the memory of a child, and when she was writing about early experiences of womanhood, those experiences felt just as real.

Scrap is also beautifully honest and vulnerable, especially considering it addresses topics that are difficult to write about. As someone who also wants to one day write about difficult, confusing, challenging yet transformative memories, I really appreciate Luanne’s ability to share her story so openly while also exploring multiple perspectives. Luanne’s writing felt intimate, almost like reading journal entries or flipping through a scrapbook of memories which gives it a raw and reflective tone. What stood out most to me was her relationship with her father. It was powerful reading about how she navigated the pain of his shortcomings while acknowledging his own pain and how his childhood shaped him as a parent.

Scrap is a story of forgiveness and making peace with the past. It will resonate with readers who appreciate introspective writing, stories about healing and complicated family relationships.

Thank you to Poetic Book Tours and the author Luanne Castle for giving me a free copy in exchange for my honest review.

About the Author

Luanne Castle’s poetry and prose have appeared in Copper Nickel, River Teeth, Your Impossible Voice, JMWW, Grist, Fourteen Hills, Verse Daily, Disappointed Housewife, Lunch Ticket, Saranac Review, Pleiades, Cleaver, Moon City, Moon Park, Anti-Heroin Chic, Bending Genres, BULL, The Mackinaw, The Ekphrastic Review, Phoebe, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Gone Lawn, Burningword, Superstition Review, One Art, Roi Fainéant, Dribble Drabble, Flash Boulevard, O:JA&L, Sheila-Na-Gig, Thimble, Antigonish Review, Longridge, Paragraph Planet, Six Sentences, Gooseberry Pie, Switch, and Ginosko. Her story, “Garden Seasons,” was selected for Best Microfiction 2026. She has published four award-winning poetry collections, and her ekphrastic flash and poetry collection Hunting the Cosmos is forthcoming from Shanti Arts in fall 2026. Learn more at luannecastle.com.