From Girl Scout to grocery store clerk, firearms instructor to special agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and eventually to freelance writer, Chris Roberts chronicles her true-life adventures and misadventures, courting rituals and second chances, extra heartbeats and lessons learned.

In this candid and witty collection of essays, Roberts recaps her first fifty years with wry humor, looking back on her blue-collar upbringing in a troubled home, where she and her brothers banded together to survive a violent father and an alcoholic mother. At the age of seventeen, Roberts...