This is both a memoir and a journalistic look at the problem of student debt and its wide-ranging effects on people’s lives. Collier herself was put into vast amounts of debt by her mother, without her knowledge, and spent years trying to climb out of the financial hole it put her in and navigate the challenging relationship she maintained with her troubled mother after the fraud came to light. Collier also discusses the history of debt and the experiences of many other current and former students who have found themselves in student loan debt to the point where they really can’t do what they want to do in life and are always under stress. Though I’d read other works on the subject of student debt, this one does a particularly good job in explaining how it is that people can be conscientiously trying to pay their debt back and still get overwhelmed and never catch up simply because of the ever increasing interest on the loans. I think I would have liked to read this as two books, one a memoir and the other an exploration of the debt problem, because I would have liked more of both, but in the end I came away from this book more thoughtful and compassionate, and I hope it will reach some of those who lack those qualities in our society today.