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  • Published: 14 November 2016
  • ISBN: 9780399185724
  • Imprint: Blue Rider Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $50.00

Never Broken

Songs Are Only Half the Story





Now in paperback, the New York Times bestselling memoir by multi-platinum singer-songwriter Jewel is an inspirational look at her life that invites readers to share in her journey as she rises above the circumstances of her upbringing and finds happiness and success.

“Jewel is a truth-teller…this is a book that lingers in your heart.” – Brené Brown
*The New York Times bestseller*

New York Times
bestselling poet and multi-platinum singer-songwriter Jewel explores her unconventional upbringing and extraordinary life in an inspirational memoir that covers her childhood to fame, marriage, and motherhood.

When Jewel’s first album, Pieces of You, topped the charts in 1995, her emotional voice and vulnerable performance were groundbreaking. Drawing comparisons to Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, a singer-songwriter of her kind had not emerged in decades. Now, with more than thirty million albums sold worldwide, Jewel tells the story of her life, and the lessons learned from her experience and her music.
     Living on a homestead in Alaska, Jewel learned to yodel at age five, and joined her parents’ entertainment act, working in hotels, honky-tonks, and biker bars. Behind a strong-willed family life with an emphasis on music and artistic talent, however, there was also instability, abuse, and trauma. At age fifteen, she moved out and tasked herself with a mission: to see if she could avoid being the kind of statistic that her past indicated for her future. Soon after, she was accepted to the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, and there she began writing her own songs as a means of expressing herself and documenting her journey to find happiness. Jewel was eighteen and homeless in San Diego when a radio DJ aired a bootleg version of one of her songs and it was requested into the top-ten countdown, something unheard-of for an unsigned artist. By the time she was twenty-one, her debut had gone multiplatinum.
      There is much more to Jewel’s story, though, one complicated by family legacies, by crippling fear and insecurity, and by the extraordinary circumstances in which she managed to flourish and find happiness despite these obstacles. Along her road of self-discovery, learning to redirect her fate, Jewel has become an iconic singer and songwriter. In Never Broken she reflects on how she survived, and how writing songs, poetry, and prose has saved her life many times over. She writes lyrically about the natural wonders of Alaska, about pain and loss, about the healing power of motherhood, and about discovering her own identity years after the entire world had discovered the beauty of her songs.

  • Published: 14 November 2016
  • ISBN: 9780399185724
  • Imprint: Blue Rider Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $50.00

Praise for Never Broken

Praise for Never Broken

  • "Jewel renders an intimate portrait of a young woman who, although immensely talented, has spent her life "surviving and recovering and problem solving since being a toddler." [Never Broken] is lushly descriptive, chronicling the author's earliest days on the old "homestead," singing in saloons, busking in Mexico, and later living out of broken-down automobiles while trying to make a living in the music business. The author mines her psyche for the benefit of both herself and anyone else embroiled in profound emotional crisis....A moving musical essay that should strike all the right notes with a wide selection of readers."--Kirkus
  • "A deeply personal memoir [that] reveals a cycle of struggles and abuse that, until now, she had kept private....Jewel reflects on an abusive upbringing and the highs and lows of her professional career, including discovering that she was broke at what should have been the pinnacle of success."--The Tennessean
  • "Jewel's Never Broken is the perfect celebrity memoir...Never Broken wants to be the story of a young woman from the hinterlands who stumbles into various experiences and reacts just the way her reader would. But her knowledge keeps sneaking through."--Daniel D'Addario, TIME