Screening calls from her father's creditors, hiding his mail from her mother—being the child of a compulsive gambler wasn't easy, and Annette B. Dunlap thought for years that her experience was a singular one. In early adulthood, she was fortunate enough to learn that she was not unique, that other children had grown up with parents (usually fathers) addicted to gambling. But when she learned, shortly before her mother died, that her grandfather had also been involved in gambling, she realized the extent to which gambling was a part of her family history. As she delved further into the subject, she also discovered the extent to which gambling is, in her words, "a peculiarly Jewish addiction." Framing the issue of gambling in both historical and sociological terms, Dunlap examines the struggle between the "official" Jewish community—Jewish leaders have long either condemned or ignored the evils of gambling—and the significant number of everyday Jews who continue to gamble, many at a level that would be considered addictive. Gambling continues to be a serious problem within the Jewish community, Dunlap argues, regardless of whether the person is Orthodox or a Jew in name only. The Gambler's Daughter is both a personal story of a father's gambling addiction and a more general inquiry into the hidden history of gambling in the Jewish community. Readers who either live or have lived with an addictive family member will find the book useful, as will those students of Jewish social history interested in a long-ignored facet of American Jewish life.

In exploring her father's own gambling addiction, the author uncovers a hidden history of gambling in the Jewish community. Screening calls from her fathers creditors, hiding his mail from her motherbeing the child of a compulsive gambler wasnt easy, and Annette B. Dunlap thought for years that her experience was a singular one. In early adulthood, she was fortunate enough to learn that she was not unique, that other children had grown up with parents (usually fathers) addicted to gambling. But when she learned, shortly before her mother died, that her grandfather had also been involved in gambling, she realized the extent to which gambling was a part of her family history. As she delved further into the subject, she also discovered the extent to which gambling is, in her words, a peculiarly Jewish addiction. Framing the issue of gambling in both historical and sociological terms, Dunlap examines the struggle between the official Jewish communityJewish leaders have long either condemned or ignored the evils of gamblingand the significant number of everyday Jews who continue to gamble, many at a level that would be considered addictive. Gambling continues to be a serious problem within the Jewish community, Dunlap argues, regardless of whether the person is Orthodox or a Jew in name only. The Gamblers Daughter is both a personal story of a fathers gambling addiction and a more general inquiry into the hidden history of gambling in the Jewish community. Readers who either live or have lived with an addictive family member will find the book useful, as will those students of Jewish social history interested in a long-ignored facet of American Jewish life.

The story of a young girls entrapment in gambling addiction. The true advert for problem gambling and how it controlled her every movement, her every thought and almost took her life. How the guilt and shame that go hand in hand with addiction stopped her from reaching out for help for 8 years as she didn't feel it was 'OK' for a young female to be a problem gambler. How she believed it was a male dominated problem. And how eventually, she did find the tools that enabled her to become free of her addiction.

Johnny’s Girl the nationally acclaimed memoir of growing up in Alaska’s underworld as the only child of gambler John F. “Johnny” Rich and exotic dancer, Frances “Ginger” Rich. It chronicles Alaska’s mean streets and her parent’s tragic lives that were cut short. Kim Rich was an ordinary girl trapped in an extraordinary childhood, someone who dreamed of going to parties and getting good grades while living in an after-hours hell of gamblers, pimps, and con men. She longed for normalcy, yet she was inescapably her father's child, and she had no choice but to grow up fast. Her mother, who suffered from mental illness, was a stripper and B-girl: her father was a major player in the underworld of Anchorage, Alaska in the sixties, a city flush with newfound oil money. Only after her father was gruesomely murdered when she was 15, and Kim became a journalist, was she able to fill in the missing pieces of one American dream gone horribly wrong. Kim's true story is a tale of a woman's search for her parent's secrets. What she finds is both shocking and tragic, but in the end she's able to discover her true self amid the remnants of her parents' lost lives.