Diary of a Dog Patcher is a raw and unflinching memoir of trauma, survival, and transformation — told with heartbreaking honesty, unexpected humor, and a fierce love that refuses to let silence win.

Born into a lineage of addiction, abandonment, suicide, and shame, Casey Carpenter was adopted at age five by her maternal grandparents. Raised in a modest neighborhood known as “Dog Patch,” where grief was inherited and hard things weren’t spoken aloud, she learned early how to patch together what others left broken.

Over the decades, she held together a family unraveling at the seams — a brother haunted by demons, partners consumed by addiction and depression, a medically fragile son whose diagnosis would redefine her life, and a daughter she was determined to raise without the burden of generational silence.

But this is not a story of redemption by way of perfection. This is a reckoning. A refusal. A radical act of truth-telling.

Through deeply personal and emotionally resonant chapters, Casey confronts the tragedies that shaped her — the deaths of nearly everyone she loved, the weight of being the strong one, the danger of hiding behind “I’m fine,” and the bravery it takes to choose a different path when everything around you has fallen apart.

With the candid vulnerability of The Glass Castle and the piercing clarity of Know My Name, Diary of a Dog Patcher speaks directly to survivors of trauma, caretakers, cycle-breakers, and anyone trying to rewrite their legacy with brutal self-honesty.

This book is not just for Casey’s children — it’s for anyone who has ever loved someone who couldn’t stay, for anyone who’s had to mother themselves, and for anyone brave enough to face the truth of where they came from in order to decide where they’re going.

It’s not a self-help manual or a tidy redemption arc. It’s a legacy — rewritten one scar, one brave choice at a time.