Scrap: Salvaging a Family: A Memoir in Flash

“…a powerful, painful family saga that slowly gives way to hard-won understanding. A richly detailed, harrowing account of household mayhem and the struggle to forgive.”

—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

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“Spare, precise, and quietly devastating, this is the kind of memoir that stays in the body long after the reading is done.”

—The Book Revue

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Luanne Castle’s new hybrid flash memoir, Scrap: Salvaging a Family (ELJ Editions 2026), is available to purchase on Amazon and ELJ Editions. Ebook only at ELJ Editions.

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Scrap: Salvaging a Family explores the stain of childhood fear and anxiety on the adult spirit and the experience of reconciling with an aging or dying parent. A daughter has grown up in a household with an angry and abusive father. He keeps the secret of his own biological father’s identity from his daughter for decades. Can this family be salvaged?

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PRAISE FOR ‘SCRAP: SALVAGING A FAMILY’
“…a powerful, painful family saga that slowly gives way to hard-won understanding. A richly detailed, harrowing account of household mayhem and the struggle to forgive.”

—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

“This lyrical, beautifully imagistic work is both an exploration of the long roots of generational trauma and identity erasure and a vivid look back at growing up female in mid-century America.”

—Kathryn Kulpa, author of A Map of Lost Places

“Castle is a deft miniaturist–each story etched with a fine blade, yet a delicate touch. Scrap is a collection of constellations of the ordinary.”

—Robert Vaughan, Editor-in-Chief of Bending Genres, author of ASKEW.

“Told in brief, strikingly vivid fragments, and through various perspectives and forms, the book as a whole presents a deeply moving and unforgettable account. We readers are privileged to bear witness to this emotional excavation, one that ultimately reminds us that love is powerful even when it’s painful and that forgiveness is the only way forward“

—Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works

“A memoir in flash, ‘Scrap’ focuses on three discrete parts of Castle’s life in relation to her parents, especially her father. ‘Scrap’ is a multivalent word around whose every meaning and nuance Castle fashions poignant—and sometimes horrifying—flash prose and poetry to reveal her family in all its human pain, mystery, and love.”

—Wilma J. Kahn, Your Impossible Voice