Flunk. Start.

"Sands Hall has brought her remarkable talents to bear on this memoir. By turns endearing and alarming, this story describes the hazards involved in having to choose between... one sort of belonging and another. I consider it Sands' best book." —Lynn Freed, author of The Romance of Elsewhere and The Last Laugh
In Flunk. Start., Sands Hall chronicles her slow yet willing absorption into the Church of Scientology. Her time in the Church, the late 1970s, includes the secretive illness and death of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and the ascension of David Miscavige. Hall compellingly reveals what drew her into the religion—what she found intriguing and useful—and how she came to confront its darker sides.
As a young woman from a literary family striving to find her own way as an artist, Hall ricochets between the worlds of Shakespeare, avant-garde theater, and soap-opera, until her brilliant elder brother, playwright Oakley Hall...