CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota has penned a memoir, Combat Love, that chronicles her near-misses and misadventures at New York clubs like CBGB and Max’s Kansas City, coupled with the sex, drugs, and punk rock of 1980s New Jersey. By the time she left home at sixteen, it felt like home had left her long ago. Combat Love is her story of growing up longing for stability and attachment as the foundation of her family crumbled. The book, coming March 26, 2024, via Rare Bird Books, is available for pre-order here.
Set on the Jersey Shore in the free-spirit 1980s, Camerota finds the belonging she craves courtesy of a local punk rock band named Shrapnel and their diehard fans. At her first punk rock concert, the band’s raucus set at the Red Bank (N.J.) Regional High School caused its principal to shut it down. Camerota tells of conning her way into a Ramones’ backstage gathering by pretending to be a hookup of a band member.
Combat Love is also the story of two women, mother and daughter, trying to forge their own paths and independence, and find their own happiness, success and wholeness. As the only child of a divorced mother the teenaged Alisyn was told they would be moving three thousand miles from home in the middle of her sophomore year in high school.
Alisyn Camerota on the first day of her sophomore year in high school
From the book: “’I don’t want to leave my friends,’” I wailed, begging her to reconsider. Like many teenagers, my friends were my world. One month later, we moved again, to a different city. Ten months later, my mom was ready to move again, to yet another city. By then, I’d had enough. I decided to go in my own direction. We parted ways when I was 16.
“I never told my mother some of the most frightening and painful moments of my teenage years. I didn’t share the stories of risky nights that involved drugs and alcohol, or the nights I slept in my car after getting kicked out of the house where I was living.”
The two-time Emmy-award-winning Camerota retraces her steps down an often gritty path toward her dream of becoming a journalist. At times heartbreaking and pulse-pounding, Combat Love is an inspiration for anyone who’s ever searched for that elusive place called home. She is a journalist, author, anchor and correspondent for CNN. In her three decades in journalism, Camerota has covered stories nationally and internationally, earning two Emmy Awards and the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award.
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