Neko Case didn’t need the good folks at Harvard or books like I Heard There Was a Secret Chord to tell her about the healing power of music. “I listened to music like it was more important than eating and breathing,” she writes in her powerful, searingly sad, yet ultimately resilient new memoir, The Harder I Fight the More I Love You.

Grappling with two people ill-suited to be parents, her early life was punctuated by poverty, emotional neglect, and horrific living conditions (watching rats scurry around the living room as she survived on a dinner of dry Jell-O was a typical evening).

Her mother actually faked her own death when Neko was small and often took the side of abusive boyfriends over her daughter, while her father was a depressed soul with barely enough interest in life to eke out his own existence, much less provide support or comfort to his sensitive daughter. 

But Case endured and ended up thriving as a songwriter and musician. And it was music that served as her most dependable companion. Perhaps that’s why the memoir is at its strongest when offering up impressionistic episodes of her life, both good and bad. At times, it’s like we’re listening to a song convey a mood rather than a literal description of a specific event. For the most part, this works well, though there are times when a little more old-fashioned narrative structure might’ve helped readers follow her rollercoaster ride of a life. 

Despite her Dickensian childhood, Case is no self-pitying victim, either. The book is replete with passages reflecting uniquely kid joys like hearing a new song on the radio, walking to a county fair with a little money in your pocket, or the wonder of observing and drawing horses, the latter a fixation she holds to this day. 

Case’s unflinching honesty can’t be questioned. She’s a wise, introspective soul, and it comes through in these pages. For example, looking back on her early days performing in bands and trying to find her way as a fledgling adult, she writes:

“I had a sort of invisible reek of sadness and low self-esteem that kept people far away, like a sulfuric stink could that I emitted in the air around me.” 

Unlike many other successful musicians, Case found listening to music — rather than writing or performing it — to be the earlier solace for her. She began as a fan, and she clearly remains one today as she praises musicians new and old. Yet it took some time for her to embrace the performer’s route (starting first as a drummer) and to use songwriting as a form of therapy. 

Her fangirl approach is refreshingly candid, and she offers many interesting appraisals of other singers and songwriters she met as she climbed the ladder herself. Mavis Staples and Robyn Hitchcock are as wonderful as people as they are as performers. Charlie Louvin? Not so much. 

Case has given us in The Harder I Fight the More I Love You a memoir worthy of her talents. Writing it, one hopes, helped her exorcise some of her long-ago demons and will inspire youngsters today who feel trapped in domestic purgatory and dream of a way out.  

Michael Causey is the host of the “A Good Hour” radio show on WOWD 94.3FM takomaradio.org., and the author of a new novel, I Want to Hold My Hand, available on Amazon.