On the cover of Little Bit, a hot-pink neon sign points the way to the dive bars and deprivation within, priming the reader for a certain type of story. Think Natassja Kinski as Jane in her pink peepshow sweater in Paris, Texas. It’s going to be a book about good women, bad men, cheap sex, crime, alcohol, and trouble.

And Little Bit largely is. Set mostly in Minneapolis, at the heart of the story is the author’s mother, Debbie, neglected to the point of abuse by her alcoholic mother, Stella – a victim herself, sexually abused by her father. Spanning from 1955 to the author’s birth in the 1970s, Debbie suffers unfathomable neglect as a small, lonely child while day-drunk Stella loses job after job and brings home man after man, night after night, from the bars she frequents. Stella’s story is as pitiful as Debbie’s, but any sympathy is used up worrying about the child, abandoned to nights alone in roach-infested hovels while her mother slowly drinks herself to an early death.