“Gentlemen! Put your hands together and welcome Cassidy to the stage!”

It wasn’t the life Marci Warhaft envisioned for herself. A good student who had been accepted into a prestigious theatre school, a doting mother with two young sons, and there she was taking it all off in front of paying customers to “Bootylicious” by Destiny’s Child.

The Good Stripper is an eye-popping journey: Warhaft reveals the punishing circumstances and self-destructive behaviors that shaped her early adulthood, including a bank-robbing stepfather, the loss of her beloved brother, eating disorders, and sexual misadventures in a dysfunctional marriage.

She describes, in honest, raw, and intimate detail, her struggles to recognize what was happening to her, and her sometimes misguided fight to regain control of her destiny. Above all, it is the story of how one woman, after years of living a double life, packing school lunches by day and giving lapdances by night, finally became the inspirational leader she was.