Nowhere Girl: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood

by Cheryl Diamond

Overview

By the age of nine, I will have lived in more than a dozen countries, on five continents, under six assumed identities. I’ll know how a document is forged, how to withstand an interrogation, and most important, how to disappear . . .

To the young Cheryl Diamond, life felt like one big adventure, whether she was hurtling down the Himalayas in a rickety car or mingling with underworld fixers. Her family appeared to be an unbreakable gang of five. One day they were in Australia, the next in South Africa, the pattern repeating as they crossed continents, changed identities, and erased their pasts. What Diamond didn’t yet know was that she was born into a family of outlaws fleeing from the highest international law enforcement agencies, a family with secrets that would eventually catch up to all of them.

By the time she was in her teens, Diamond had lived dozens of lives and lies, but as she grew older, love and trust turned to fear and violence, and her family—the only people she had in the world—began to unravel. She started to realize that her life itself might be a big con, and the people she loved, the most dangerous of all. With no way out and her identity burned so often that she had no proof she even existed, all that was left was a girl from nowhere.

Surviving would require her to escape, and to do so Diamond would have to unlearn all the rules she grew up with. Wild, heartbreaking, and often unexpectedly funny, Nowhere Girl is an impossible-to-believe true story of self-discovery and triumph.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643752518
Publisher:	Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Publication date:	06/14/2022
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	400,283
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 5.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Cheryl Diamond is now a citizen of Luxembourg and lives between there and Rome. Her behind-the-scenes account of life as a teenage model, Model: A Memoir, was published in 2008. Diamond´s second book, Naked Rome, reveals the Eternal City through the eyes of its most fascinating people. Her new book, Nowhere Girl: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood, is available now.

Table of Contents

Prologue. Kashmir, India, age 4 1

Part 1

1 The Chase 17

2 Amritsar, India, age 4 20

3 Sydney, Australia, age 5 26

4 Cape Town, South Africa, age 5 31

5 Vancouver, age 6 40

6 Vancouver, age 7 52

7 British Columbia, age 7 57

8 Vancouver, age 8 60

9 Germany, age 8 65

10 Heidelberg, age 9 73

11 Frankfurt Airport, age 9 78

12 Heidelberg, age 9 81

13 Romania and Cairo, age 10 87

14 Vienna, age 10 93

15 Cyprus, age 10 97

16 Tel Aviv, Israel, age 11 103

17 Tel Aviv, age 11 112

18 Tel Aviv, age 11 118

19 Virginia, USA, age 12 120

20 Virginia, age 12 130

21 Virginia, age 13 134

22 Virginia, age 13 139

23 Virginia, age 13 147

24 Virginia, age 13 150

25 Virginia, age 13 157

26 Virginia, age 14 163

27 Virginia, age 15 172

28 North Carolina, age 15 176

Part 2

29 Luxembourg, Fall, 1979 183

30 3 a.m., Panama City, 1985 192

Part 3

31 North Carolina, age 15 207

32 New York City, age 16 213

33 New York City, age 17 220

34 New York City, age 21 228

35 New York City, age 22 232

36 New York City, age 22 239

37 Florida, age 23 241

38 Florida, age 24 248

39 Florida, age 24 252

Part 4

40 On the road / Luxembourg, age 24 257

41 Luxembourg, age 24 266

42 Berlin, age 25 270

43 Lauchhammer Hospital, Germany, at Christmas, age 26 277

44 Tuscany, age 27 281

45 Luxembourg, age 27 284

46 Rome, age 27 291

47 Luxembourg, age 28 301

Epilogue. Rome, age 30 305

Acknowledgments 309

Questions for Discussion 310

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/05/2021

Former model Diamond (Naked Rome) offers a transfixing chronicle of her coming-of-age bouncing from city to city and country to country to outrun the authorities. Her family—a tight band of five comprising her parents, sister, and brother—lived a life straight out of a thriller that was marked by false identities, financial schemes, deep mistrust, and a desperation to avoid Interpol officers. “By the age of nine, I will have lived in more than a dozen countries, on five continents, under six assumed identities,” she writes. As her family flitted from India to South Africa to America—committing forgery and fraud along the way—she was taught how to survive through judo lessons and a detailed escape plan (which she was entrusted with at age 13) to use “if everything goes to hell”—but she never learned her parents’ real names to protect them and herself. In a propulsive, at times harrowing, narrative, Diamond recounts the tutelage of her psychologically abusive father, how she went from being homeless to a successful fashion model in New York City, and a debilitating illness that devastated her mind and body in her early 20s. Eloquent and bracing, Diamond’s story will haunt readers long after the last page. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"A riveting tale of trauma and resilience."
—People

“Like Tara Westover’s Educated, Cheryl Diamond’s memoir tells the harrowing story of how crippling a childhood can be under the despotic narcissistic rule of a controlling father . . . Diamond has a powerful story to tell, and she tells it well, creating strong characters and settings, describing the complicated motivations of her parents and older siblings, all while conveying her yearning for ‘normalcy,’ whatever that is.”
—New York Journal of Books
 
“A shocking rollercoaster ride of a story that shares secrets of life on the run but also asks big questions about what family means and who we truly are, no matter what the name on a passport might say.”
—Town Country

“This memoir is proof that truth really is stranger than fiction.”
—CrimeReads, “The Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2021: Summer Reading Edition”

“A transfixing chronicle . . . Propulsive . . . Eloquent and bracing, Diamond’s story will haunt readers long after the last page.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“A beyond-harrowing memoir . . .  Diamond's tale might just be the most mind-blowing of them all.”
—Booklist, starred review

“Former teen model Diamond reveals a childhood both wacky and cliff-hanging in Nowhere Girl; on the run with an outlaw family, she lived in more than a dozen countries, on five continents, under six assumed identities, by age nine.”
—Library Journal

“Nowhere Girl beautifully captures the intensity, darkness, and fierce love within an uncompromising outlaw family. Diamond's odyssey would leave the most adventurous among us panting to keep up.”
—Alia Volz, author of Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco

From the Publisher

06/01/2021

Diamond (Model: A Memoir) describes the incredible story of her childhood spent on the run. Born in New Zealand, to parents and siblings who were already living under assumed identities, Diamond (using a fake birth certificate) travels with her family from India to Australia to South Africa to Canada to Germany. Her parents' source of income is nebulous, but somehow relates to the gold bullion market. Her father, who determines the family's trajectory, is alternately cryptic and grandiose, coldly critical and physically abusive. Diamond effectively conveys an atmosphere of psychological suspense as she begins to unravel the events that led to her parents' fugitive status. Their lives crater in Virginia during Diamond's teenage years. There her brother Frank, who sexually abused her, inexplicably disappears, and her sister Chiara runs away and threatens to expose the family. Diamond escapes to New York to try modeling but cannot extricate herself from her parents. She sensitively traces her diagnosis of Crohn's disease and her life with chronic illness, along with her fraught decision to finally escape her family and claim a legal identity and citizenship. VERDICT Diamond's memoir is compulsively readable; for fans of suspense novels or memoirs like Tyler Wetherall's No Way Home.—Barrie Olmstead, Lewiston P.L., ID

Library Journal

08/01/2021

Born to a family on the run, Harbhajan, aka Bhajan, has never known what it's like to call somewhere home. Throughout her transient childhood, her family cycles through countries, identities, and religions at the drop of a hat, always on the run from a mysterious, unknown enemy. Because they are always on the move, a formal education, stability, and sense of normalcy are never a priority for Bhajan, the youngest in her family. The book charts her life through significant ages and locations, beginning at age four and ending at 28, with stints as a top-level gymnast and best-selling author among the highlights. Much more frequent, however, are the lowlights that punctuate her isolated family life: physical abuse at the hands of her volatile father, verbal abuse perpetuated by a hateful sister, and sexual abuse carried out by the person she had trusted most, her brother. This compelling memoir illustrates life on the run with short, fast-paced chapters that often end abruptly as Bhajan and her family are found out and take off again. As Bhajan grows older and life becomes slightly more stable, the narrative slows down, focusing more deeply on Bhajan's reckoning with her upbringing: trauma, forgiveness, family, and finding home. VERDICT Readers intrigued by memoirs of resiliency in spite of insular upbringings like Educated by Tara Westover or The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls will be riveted by Diamond's work.—Mary Kamela, Kenmore West High School, Buffalo, NY

School Library Journal