Leaving Breezy Street: A Memoir

Myers-Powell pulls no punches in her piercing debut, an account of how she got out of a life of prostitution and drug use, and used the experience to get others off the street. In 1997, after a run-in with a john who hit her and dragged her with his car, she landed in the hospital pummeled so badly that, she writes, “I didn’t have no face.” At age 39, that was a wake-up call for Myers-Powell—who got clean soon after and has been advocating for victims of sex trafficking ever since. But it wasn’t the first time she’d suffered at the hands of another man. Raised by an alcoholic grandmother in Chicago, she was sexually abused at a young age by her uncle and his friends. By the time she turned 14, she was addicted to crack and working as a prostitute to support her two infants. In the 25 years that followed, she was stabbed 13 times and shot five times. “Folks tell me, ain’t all that happen to you,” she writes. “I wish to God I was lying my head off.” Myers-Powell isn’t shy describing her gritty past (“I done seen some girls do some pretty awful things...that crack had tore my ass up”) and the delivery is stirring. This page-turner impresses from start to finish. (June)