How to Cook Your Daughter - by Jessica Hendra (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From the daughter of the bestselling author of Father Joe: the poignant and ultimately hopeful memoir of a young girl's struggle to live a normal childhood in the chaotic seventies, and to overcome sexual abuse by her famous father

Earlier this year, Tony Hendra's memoir, Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul, spent thirteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. The book detailed his life as a comedian who launched the careers of John Belushi and Chevy Chase and helped create such cult classics as This Is Spinal Tap, while he struggled with inner demons including alcohol and drug abuse. But there was a glaring omission in his supposed tell-all confessional: his sexual abuse of his daughter, Jessica Hendra, when she was a young girl.

After more than thirty years of silence, Hendra has decided to reveal the truth. In this poignant memoir, she reveals the full story behind the New York Times article that rocked the world and detailed her father's crimes. But Jessica's story is no footnote to her father's story. No One Was Listening is also the inspiring story of her own journey, and how she was finally able to find healing within, after years of struggling with anorexia, bulimia, and low self-esteem. Set against the backdrop of the chaotic seventies, Hendra's memoir follows Jessica and her sister Kathy as they strove to make a normal life for themselves amidst the madness, sex, and drug abuse that her parents and their friends--many of the household names in the world of show business--participated in. No One Was Listening reveals the hope and heartache of a young girl who was faced with a loss of innocence at an early age, who faced a slow and painful recovery, and who finally found contentment and peace within.

From the Back Cover

In 2004, Tony Hendra's memoir, Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul, spent thirteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. The book detailed his life as a comedian who helped launch the careers of Jim Belushi and Chevy Chase, wrote for and edited National Lampoon, and performed in the cult classic This Is Spinal Tap, even as he overindulged in alcohol and drugs. But there was a glaring omission in his supposed tell-all confessional: the sexual abuse of his daughter, Jessica.

After more than thirty years of silence, Jessica faced a harrowing choice. In this powerful book, she reveals how she came to the decision to publicly confront her father, sacrificing any hope of reconciling with him and setting into motion a New York Times investigation that shocked the literary world when the story of abuse broke. Jessica's account is neither a minor footnote nor an angry response to her dad's bestseller. How to Cook Your Daughter--titled after a satirical piece her father wrote only a few months before the abuse began--is an unflinching and unsentimental look at a childhood that never was, set in a time and place straight from the pages of the outrageous magazine that her father helped to create.

Set against the backdrop of the 1970s New York comedy scene, the memoir traces Jessica's journey from a lost and abused child to a young woman struggling with bulimia and anorexia to the mother of two who becomes convinced that challenging her father is the only way to reclaim a life that never seemed her own.

Review Quotes

"Captivating, witty, and not self-pitying." - Jane
"Sharply written and absorbing." - Library Journal
"Excellent . . . gripping . . . Uncommonly fair and evenhanded. . . . A polished and touching piece of work." - Kirkus Reviews
"Riveting . . . [Hendra's] head-on confrontation with her demons is the ultimate story of bravery." - USA Today
"Jessica Hendra's description of 'growing up in a world where nothing is sacred' reads well, and a passage in which she describes the abuse to her therapist, juxtaposed with her father's skit referred to in the book's title, made this reviewer's skin crawl." - Philadelphia Inquirer
"Jessica came to see, or so she says in this steady, controlled narrative, that her neuroses, her eating disorders, her overwhelming sadness, had sprung from her father's misconduct." - Washington Post
"Lucid and trustworthy . . . exemplifies the reasons for and the costs and rewards of a life intent on healing." - Christian Century
"Literature of moral power. . . . Father Joe may not have saved [Tony Hendra], but in writing her book, his daughter may have saved herself." - New York Times
"Excellent . . . gripping . . . Jessica depicts her childhood among frenetically drug-fueled and rage-prone comics like John Belushi. . . . Uncommonly fair and evenhanded. . . . A polished and touching piece of work." - Kirkus Reviews
"Literature of moral power. . . . Father Joe may not have saved [Tony Hendra], but in writing her book, his daughter may have saved herself." - New York Times