Revisiting Domenica Ruta's Acclaimed Memoir

Domenica Ruta's "With or Without You" is being released in paperback today. Her memoir of growing up in Danvers, Mass., received raves when it published last February.

In the book, Ruta depicts a chaotic upbringing. Her mother Kathi fought to have Domenica attend good schools, but she also used and sold prescription and illegal drugs and ran a household that was chaotic at best.

As Ruta told Here & Now's Robin Young last March, "Our refrigerator was full of rotten food, we didn't have Q-tips, we were always running out of toilet paper, but we had a full medicine cabinet full of high grade narcotics."

She also writes about her own substance abuse problems in her book, and her decision to no longer have any contact with Kathi.