Flunk. Start.

A captivating guide through one woman's struggle to find herself through Scientology, and how she finally escaped

Is there a term for a bad choice, one you continue to make, remaining on a path even as you understand your choice is not good for you? How do you abandon that life, and attempt to live a new one, making sense of the time you had given away so willingly? Flunk. Start. is a candid, revealing memoir of what drew author, actress, and musician Sands Hall to Scientology, how she left the Church after nearly a decade, and how she has finally come to terms with those years that she had previously thought of as lost.

Hall is a captivating guide, describing her slow absorption into the Church, but Flunk. Start. is more than a recounting of her time in Scientology—it’s also about growing up in an eccentric literary family, and the tale of her brilliant, tragic older brother, the playwright Oakley Hall III. It’s a story of navigating relationships—spiritual and familial—and how her desire to know has shaped Hall's life.

In Flunk.Start. , Hall is able to resolve rather than expose; to explore rather than condemn. She does so in a gorgeous narrative with a visceral affection for the comforting, beguiling power of words.