num_pages: 320
description: The incredible true story of a family built on lies. What if the people you love most are not who you thought they were? What if you dont know who you are either? Cheryl Diamonds memoir begins when she is four and her family is in Kashmir India hurtling down the Himalayas in their battered station wagon headed for the Golden Temple the holiest site in the Sikh religion. The family are Sikhs. Today. In a few years they will be Jewish. Cheryls name is Harbhajan. Today. But in a few years she will be Crystal. By the time she turns nine Cheryl has had at least six assumed identities. She has lived on five continents fleeing the specter of Interpol and law enforcement. Her father a master financial criminal or so she believes uproots the family at the slightest sign of suspicion. Despite the strange circumstances Diamonds life as a young child is mostly joyful and exciting her family of five a tiny happy circle unto themselves. Even as she learn how to forge identity papers and fix a car with chicken wire she somehow becomes a near-Olympic-level athlete and then an international teenage model. She even publishes a book about it. As she grows older though things get darker. Her identity is burned again and again leaving her with no past no proof even that she exists and her familythe only people she has in the worldbegins to unravel. Love and trust turn to fear and violence. Secrets are revealed and she is betrayed by those on whom she relies most. Slowly Diamond begins to realize that her life itself might be a big con. Surviving would require her to escape and we root for this determined woman as she unlearns all the rules of her family. Cinematic and witty Nowhere Girl is an impossible-to-believe true story of self-discovery and triumph. 
language: English
title: Nowhere Girl: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood
publisher: Algonquin Books