Blind Pony As True A Story As I Can Tell is a coming-of-age memoir detailing the poignant journey of Samantha Hart, a precocious runaway teen who lands in 70s Los Angeles.
The narrative follows her harrowing childhood of abuse in Pennsylvania, fleeing to reconnect with an estranged father in Phoenix, and thrown to the wolves among the bright lights and wild nights of L.A. in the heyday of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. She was hustling Backgammon in Hollywood and flogging nude photos in Europe, all before 17. Readers have made comparisons to Jeanette Walls' best-selling The Glass Castle and Cheryl Strayed's Wild.
At 14, she ran away from home to escape her grandfather's sexual abuse and made her way to Arizona, searching for her father, a distant memory she knew only as "Wild Bill." But the heroic figure she clung to in hear heart was not the drunk she came to know as Bill, and she was on her own to scrabble between finishing high school and supporting herself working underage as a barmaid. She had only herself to rely on and to protect her from the predatory world of men around her. But when one of those men gave her the chance to leave Phoenix for Los Angeles, she fled one precarious situation for another. At 15, she already had nothing left to lose. She encountered a Dionysian spectacle of drugs, decadence, and money in Hollywood, where good times flowed, erasing bad memories. She was quickly swept up in a life that tested every strategic resource she had learned to survive. And when a wealthy playboy mistook her Pittsburgh accent for British, a new spiral of white lies began, and a new identity was born. Soon, the stones of Europe were under her feet, and self-preservation was the only thing on her mind as she floated through this new dimension of champagne parties, sexual adventures, and a whirlwind of international escapades. As she trekked on, a portfolio of nude photos under her arm, new worlds of promise and love began opening to her. Against all odds, her young, broken spirit found the strength to persevere, survive the un-survivable, and transcend the temptation to give up in a world that seemed so set against her. All these years later, she is a mother and grandmother with an award-winning career in Hollywood, but she is also still that young woman, a survivor, trying to find her true self among the ashes of her past. BLIND PONY: AS TRUE A STORY AS I CAN TELL is the tale of one young woman's unwillingness to accept the circumstanc