Reader Meet Writer: Cheryl Diamond

“An absolutely breathless read. Nowhere missy is a courageous, pump-breaking, and beautifully written story of a missy doing everything in her power to protect the ones she loves.”
—Paul Haggis, Academy Award-winning writer/managing director of Crash, Million Dollar Baby, and Online Casino South Africa Royale

By the age of nine, I will have got lived in more than a dozen countries, on v continents, under six assumed identities. I’ll know how a document is forged, how to withstand an interrogation, and most important, how to disappear . . .

Wild, pump-wrenching, and unexpectedly funny, Nowhere missy is an inspiring coming-of-age memoir about running for freedom against the odds.

To the young Cheryl Diamond, life felt like one big adventure, whether she was hurtling downwardly the Himalayas in a rickety car or mingling with underworld fixers. Her household unit appeared to be an unbreakable gang of v. 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 household unit of outlaws fleeing from the highest international law enforcement agencies, a household unit 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, but as she grew, love and trust turned to fright and violence, and her household unit—the only people she had in the world—began to unravel. She started to realize 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 l-l existed, all that was left was a missy from nowhere.

Surviving would require her to escape, and to do so Diamond would have got to unlearn all the rules she grew up with. Like The drinking glass Castle meets Catch Me If You Can, Nowhere missy is an impossible-to-believe true story of self-regain and triumph.

Cheryl Diamond is now a citizen of Luxembourg and lives between there and Rome. Her behind-the-scenes account of life as a teenage model, Model: A Memoir, was published in 2008. Diamond´s second book, Naked Rome, reveals the Eternal City through the eyes of its most fascinating people.