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**THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**
''Astonishing... precisely crafted, emotionally-sucker-punching prose.'' Daily Telegraph
''Dangerous, immediate and lyrical from the jump.'' Wall Street Journal
HOLLYWOOD PARK is a remarkable memoir of a tumultuous life. Mikel Jollett was born into one of the country''s most infamous cults, and subjected to a childhood filled with poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse. Yet, ultimately, his is a story of fierce love and family loyalty told in a raw, poetic voice that signals the emergence of a uniquely gifted writer.
Mikel Jollett was born in an experimental commune in California, which later morphed into the Church of Synanon, one of the country''s most infamous and dangerous cults. Per the leader''s mandate, all children, including Jollett and his older brother, were separated from their parents when they were six months old, and handed over to the cult''s ''School''. After spending years in what was essentially an orphanage, Mikel escaped the cult one morning with his mother and older brother. But in many ways, life outside Synanon was even harder and more erratic.
In his raw, poetic and powerful voice, Jollett portrays a childhood filled with abject poverty, trauma, emotional abuse, delinquency and the lure of drugs and alcohol. Raised by a clinically depressed mother, tormented by his angry older brother, subjected to the unpredictability of troubled step-fathers and longing for contact with his father, a former heroin addict and ex-con, Jollett slowly, often painfully, builds a life that leads him to Stanford University and, eventually, to finding his voice as a writer and musician, forming the band The Airborne Toxic Event.
