MB Caschetta’s A Cheerleader’s Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment records indelibly a life of hope during the devastation and aftermath of events leading up through the early 21st Century.

Caschetta crystallizes the iconic moments of each unique era and community, exposing a girlhood rife with misogyny, a coming-to adulthood in the boom of social justice, a surprise family upheaval, and an unexpected shock during the surreal and suspended age of COVID. Even through the wreckage of our times, these essays find connection and redemption enough for us all.

Like Joan Didion’s extraordinary reporting on life in the 1960s, Caschetta’s sureness of tone and linguistic acumen makes this memoir in essays an instant classic of American autobiography.

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“I knew Mary Beth Caschetta was a brilliant writer from her Modern Love essay about being disinherited. What I didn’t know until I read her stunning nonfiction collection is that she is also a trailblazing activist ex-cheerleader poodle-loving almost-nun. And those aren’t even spoilers.”
—Augusten Burroughs, author of Running With Scissors and Toil & Trouble