North of Normal: A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Unusual Family, and How I Survived Both

by Cea Sunrise Person • 2014

Growing up off the grid amid multiple generations of dysfunction, former model Person chronicles her journey to reclaim her life on her own terms. Determined to abandon civilization for a hand-to-mouth existence in the wild, her charismatic grandfather Papa Dick uprooted the Person clan from suburban California to the forests of Canada when she was just a baby. Together with her teenage mother Michelle--her father long gone--Person spent the next decade of her life living in and out of canvas tipis with neither electricity nor running water, at the mercy of fierce storms, food shortages, and an array of grown-ups more interested in having a groovy time than in parenting a child.