Nowhere Girl: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood

• Author: Cheryl Diamond
• Genre: Memoir
• Publication Date: June 15, 2021
• Publisher: Workman Publishing

The incredible true story of a family built on lies. 

What if the people you love most are not who you thought they were? What if you don’t know who you are, either? Cheryl Diamond’s memoir begins when she is four and her family is in Kashmir, India, hurtling down the Himalayas in their battered station wagon headed for the Golden Temple, the holiest site in the Sikh religion. The family are Sikhs. Today. In a few years they will be Jewish. Cheryl’s name is Harbhajan. Today. But in a few years she will be Crystal. By the time she turns nine, Cheryl has had at least six assumed identities. She has lived on five continents, fleeing the specter of Interpol and law enforcement. Her father, a master financial criminal, or so she believes, uproots the family at the slightest sign of suspicion.

Despite the strange circumstances, Diamond’s life as a young child is mostly joyful and exciting, her family of five a tiny, happy circle unto themselves. Even as she learn how to forge identity papers and fix a car with chicken wire, she somehow becomes a near-Olympic-level athlete and then an international teenage model. She even publishes a book about it. As she grows older, though, things get darker. Her identity is burned again and again, leaving her with no past, no proof even that she exists, and her family—the only people she has in the world—begins to unravel. Love and trust turn to fear and violence. Secrets are revealed, and she is betrayed by those on whom she relies most.

Slowly, Diamond begins to realize that her life itself might be a big con. Surviving would require her to escape, and we root for this determined woman as she unlearns all the rules of her family. Cinematic and witty, Nowhere Girl is an impossible-to-believe true story of self-discovery and triumph.

I happened to stumble upon this book while browsing through library offerings. With one of those summaries that make you realize that sometimes life can be stranger than fiction, I had to give this one a read. It’s a rollercoaster ride of a life, and every expectation I went into this with was more than satisfied.

Cheryl tells the story of her life in a linear fashion, starting with her earliest memories. Before she’s in double digits, she’s already seen more of the world than most adults, has gone through at least six assumed identities, and is on the run from Interpol and law enforcement. It’s a life where she is constantly learning and adapting, with her parents, brother, and sister. Cheryl, or Harbhajan as she was originally named, received an education on the road—she was tutored by her parents, who had an impressive array of knowledge, and was constantly encouraged to think outside the box and take in new information. 

At first, her memories are ones that she saw as a nomad, and the countries that have really influenced her early worldview: traveling to a Sikh holy site in Kashmir, being in South Africa shortly before apartheid was abolished, and even living in Israel, where her gymnastics skills propelled her towards Olympic level, until she was sidelined by injury. From there, she headed into the modeling world, with her tall, thin frame and incredible bone structure making her exactly what modeling agencies looked for. She even managed to publish a book, all while living under a fake identity and on the run.

It isn’t until much later in her life that it occurs to her to question her parents on anything. Once her family begins to unravel, she starts to look at her life with a clearer lens, and is forced to make some tough choices. While they seemed so clear to me, I didn’t have an emotional stake in this. I had to mind myself that this was someone who saw so much of the world, but took longer to see the people around her for who they were. She’s easy to like, and I constantly had to remind myself that these were all real people, and that this was a memoir, not fiction, because it was that engrossing. 

Cheryl/Harbhajan is so easy to empathize with, as she shares the highest and lowest points of her life on the run, and how difficult it was to set down roots after a nomadic life. She is an innocent victim in the crimes of her parents, and it was so heartbreaking to watch her going through so much and not have any safe outlets. Ultimately, she ended up taking all that pain and directing it inward, in what is one of the clearest cases of how psychic pain and trauma can be a contributing factor to the development of autoimmune conditions.

It’s always so difficult to review a memoir, but I found this one to be incredibly powerful. While there are fun memories that Diamond shares with readers, she doesn’t shy away from discussing the difficult topics that came up throughout her young life. This memoir feels almost as if she kept so many of her thoughts inside that they all come flowing out in this book, like she’s been plugging holes in a dam all this time, and the water finally breaks through. I couldn’t help but feel so much for the author, who has had a lifetime of experiences, yet had to be taught things that so many of us never even think about having to learn, like how roots are put down. There is a big trigger warning for childhood sexual abuse, but overall, this is one of those books that I’m glad I got to read and learn about a completely different lifestyle that I never thought possible outside of television.

You might enjoy this if you:

• Love to travel, or have a major sense of wanderlust.
• Want to broaden your horizons and see life from a different perspective.
• Love moving, powerful memoirs where the subject of the story undergoes amazing character growth.

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