The Many Lives of Mama Love with Author Lara Love Hardin

The Many Lives of Mama Love with Lara Love Hardin 

Sunday, Feb 16

4-5 pm CT

Online

“Once you start reading, be prepared, because you won’t want to stop.” —Oprah Winfrey

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • New York Times bestselling author Lara Love Hardin recounts her slide from soccer mom to opioid addict to jailhouse shot caller and her unlikely comeback as a highly successful ghostwriter in this harrowing, hilarious, no-holds-barred memoir.

No one expects the police to knock on the door of the million-dollar two-story home of the perfect cul-de-sac housewife. But soccer mom Lara Love Hardin has been hiding a shady secret: she is funding her heroin addiction by stealing her neighbors’ credit cards.

Lara is convicted of thirty-two felonies and becomes inmate S32179. She finds that jail is a class system with a power structure that is somewhere between an adolescent sleepover party and Lord of the Flies. Furniture is made from tampon boxes, and Snickers bars are currency. But Lara quickly learns the rules and brings love and healing to her fellow inmates as she climbs the social ladder and acquires the nickname “Mama Love,” showing that jailhouse politics aren’t that different from the PTA meetings she used to attend.

When she’s released, she reinvents herself as a ghostwriter. Now, she’s legally co-opting other people’s identities and getting to meet Oprah, meditate with the Dalai Lama, and have dinner with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But the shadow of her past follows her. Shame is a poison worse than heroin—there is no way to detox. Lara must learn how to forgive herself and others, navigate life as a felon on probation, and prove to herself that she is more good than bad, among other essential lessons.

The Many Lives of Mama Love is a heartbreaking and tender journey from shame to redemption, despite a system that makes it almost impossible for us to move beyond the worst thing we have ever done.

AUTHOR BIO:

Lara Love Hardin is a literary agent, author, prison reform advocate, and president of True Literary. Her memoir, The Many Lives of Mama Love is a 2024 Oprah Book Club pick and a New York Times bestseller. She has an MFA in creative writing and apart from her own book, is also a five-time New York Times bestselling collaborative writer, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Designing Your Life, and 2018 Oprah Book Club pick, The Sun Does Shine, which she coauthored with Anthony Ray Hinton about his 30 years as an innocent man on Alabama’s death row. In 2019, she won a Christopher Award for her work “affirming the highest values of the human spirit,” nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and short-listed for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Lara is also the co-founder of The Gemma Project, a gender-responsive organization serving incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women with integrity and compassion. Love Hardin lives in La Selva Beach, California.

MODERATOR BIO:

Jenna Mueller is the Chief Operations Officer at the F5 project, a statewide initiative to bridge resources and provide full-spectrum services to people struggling with incarceration, mental health, and addiction.

This One Book, One ND event is sponsored by The Paris Family Foundation and Prairie Public

HND Value Statement:

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this program, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or Humanities North Dakota. However, in an increasingly polarized world, we at Humanities North Dakota believe that being open-minded is necessary to thinking critically and rationally. Therefore, our programs and classes reflect our own open-mindedness in the inquiry, seeking, and acquiring of scholars to speak at our events and teach classes for our Public University. To that end, we encourage our participants to join us in stepping outside our comfort zones and considering other perspectives and ideas by being open-minded while attending HND events featuring scholars who hold a variety of opinions, some being opposite of our own held beliefs.

Humanities North Dakota classes and events are funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities