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Lessons in Reverse

“Lessons in Reverse” is a 70,000-word, collage memoir that began as fiction but found its way to me in the dark one sleepless night while I was staying in a crowded hotel room during a trip through Colombia.

My memoir examines the fraught, corrosive, and incomplete relationship I shared with my father for forty-six years, the way it influenced my own life choices, and my struggle to make sense of our failed connection after his death.

The book is a testament to the oft-overlooked influence fathers have on their daughters, and how this important dynamic can inform a woman’s sense of self, her sexuality, and her ability to form healthy relationships with others—and most especially with men.

Ultimately, “Lessons in Reverse” reveals the narrator’s discovery that forgiveness isn’t the only path through the dark. That the way we come to terms with those who’ve hurt us deeply is as much a journey as a personal choice, and one we can only embark on in the context of our own failings, along with our ability to remain true to ourselves.

Dana Tye Rally has heartbreaking tales to tell, and she conveys her life experiences in prose that soars above the pain she reveals. She writes masterfully, with poetic touches that surprise and gratify the reader. Dana is a coming force in Canadian letters.

—Seán Dwyer

Author of A Quest for Tears: Surviving Traumatic Brain Injury

Dana is a writer with extraordinary dexterity. She is capable of bringing forward both images and complex emotions in a way that draws readers into the worlds she creates, whether those worlds be drawn from her own life or from her imagination. As her editor and one of her greatest fans, I delight in her every word. Whatever Dana Tye Rally writes, you should read. Her ability to strike her targeted tone, while telling a story with universal takeaways, is unique and beautiful.

—Cami Ostman

Founder of The Narrative Project, author of Second Wind

Dana Tye Rally is an extraordinary new voice in Canadian literature with a poetic gift for language. Her story “The Invisible Man,” a brief account of a childhood of financial privilege but emotional privation, is fresh, intimate, and blisteringly honest. Her next work: not to be missed.

—Laine Dalby

Writer and editor

Dana’s paints worlds with her words. The exterior realms are filled with vibrant descriptions and vivid metaphors while the interior territory offers the reader a rich interior landscape that reveals the character’s emotional experience. And the tension she creates between these worlds keeps me at the edge of my seat. I am delighted, engaged, and held every time I read her work.

—Colleen Haggerty

Author of A Leg To Stand On: An Amputee’s Walk Into Motherhood

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