The Liars' Club

Leechfield is Mary Karr's fictionalized name for the East Texas industrial community where she grew up. The setting is closely associated with Port Arthur and the oil-refining landscape of southeast Texas.

The title refers to the group of men who gathered with Karr's father, Pete, to drink and trade elaborate stories. Their storytelling also supplies a model for the memoir's mixture of humor, exaggeration, memory, and painful family history.

Karr writes about her mother's mental illness, her father's drinking, family violence, sexual abuse, and a temporary move to Colorado. She tells these events largely through the perspective of her childhood self rather than presenting a detached adult case history.

Yes. Cherry continues into her adolescence, while Lit covers adulthood, addiction, recovery, motherhood, and religious conversion.