City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

Nowhere girl, a memoir of a fugitive childhood, Cheryl Diamond

eng

autobiography

no index present

non fiction

Nowhere girl

Cheryl Diamond

a memoir of a fugitive childhood

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 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. She had been a practicing Sikh and had also celebrated a bat mitzvah, both while training to be a near-Olympic-level athlete. 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 realise 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