By Holly L.

“I had actually DONE IT. I had made horses appear!!!” Neko Case recalls a defining moment described as “a bit of magic” from her childhood. Neglected by young parents who left her home alone from a too-early age, she was constantly hungry for food and companionship. One day, while desperately yearning for a horse, she makes not one but two horses appear before her eyes, a visualization she describes as “a real arrival to a real place.” In drawing these beasts from her imagination, Case establishes a sense of self and a creative identity that proves comforting.

She says that today, at age 52, she, “can still see the horses clear as day.” An early scene from Case’s new memoir, The Harder I Fight The More I Love You, it is one of many pictures drawn from memory that illustrates a fierce bond with nature and longing for connection in a world in which she felt unwanted. Today, she is a critically praised Grammy-nominated artist and has recently been welcomed back to the Grand Ole Opry after being banned in 2001 after taking her shirt off (playing an outdoor festival on a sweltering day, she found herself delirious and stripped down to her bra to avoid heatstroke).

I discovered Neko Case in 2005 when my friend Amanda tipped me off to her. Encouraging me to give her a listen, she said the name of Case’s third album like a command: Blacklisted. So I listened. The opening song Things That Scare Me hooked me from the start with its dark country twang and noir vibes (Case mentions the recently departed David Lynch as a strong influence). By the second song, “Deep Red Bells,” the saturated images of her haunted world gave me chills and had me fully converted: 

The red bells beckon you to ride
A handprint on the driver’s side
It looks a lot like engine oil and tastes like being poor and small
And Popsicles in the summer

Case details her traumatic childhood, starting out poor and small outside Bellingham in Northwestern Washington State. She recalls communing with the velvety-tracked ferns outside the trailer she shared with her mom and dad as she lay on the ground to “pet the soft dots” for hours. Throughout the book, she speaks reverently of animals and nature as wondrous beings, benign and free of ill-intent, unlike the adults in her life. Looking back on a short stint in her early childhood when the family lived near Cocoa Beach, FL when her dad was in the Air Force, Case recalls encounters with crabs, “little magicians of harmless danger, their black eyes atop long stalks like cartoon exclamation points.” This kind of vivid imagery, familiar to fans of her music, injects her prose with sound and color, conjuring up a sort of real-life fairy tale. 

Things get dark in Case’s story when, as a second grader, her Dad abruptly informs her that her mother is dead. His story is that her mother has been “very sick” recently, which is news to Case, who recalls only a few doctor’s visits, nothing that seemed serious. Stunned with disbelief, she gets on with life as kids do, only to be told by her father a little more than a year later that her mother is actually alive and has been living in Hawaii to receive treatment for her illness. The explanation is that her mother left so that the family wouldn’t have to see her suffer. Case is so elated to have her mother back that she doesn’t really question the story until years later, and the family never speaks about it.

From these turbulent beginnings outside Bellingham, Case crisscrosses the state as she splits time between her parents, who have divorced. Whether with her mom or dad, she is left alone for hours at a time, an only child who finds connection to the music that she hears on the radio: Buffy Sainte-Marie, the Go-Go’s, and Blondie are among those whose records she listens to in her school’s library when the other kids are playing at recess. Music becomes Case’s comfort and escape. Putting on headphones and pressing play on her “lavender off-brand, gas-station Walkman” helps her drown out the noise of a menacing world occupied by depressed, neglectful parents and the ever-present threat of the Green River Killer, whose murders dominate the local news. When she leaves Washington to attend a fine arts college in Vancouver, BC, she starts playing drums in a punk band called Maow. Feeling comfortable behind the drum kit, she’s reluctant to sing and one day asks her bandmates which one of them should sing a song when one shoots back “YOU sing it!” And so she does. The rest is history.

Although she had loved to sing all her life, it took her a long time to consider herself a capital S singer. Throughout a 30+ year career spanning solo and collaborative albums with such bands as power pop dynamos The New Pornographers, Case has taken ownership of her voice—which ranges from a soaring clarion call to a soft, breathy lilt and is always uniquely her own. I tore through this page-turner of a memoir, enthralled by Case’s heartbreaking story told in her trademark voice. Case’s sense of humor and nuanced perspective help the reader process some of the darker elements of her past, which includes severe neglect and sexual abuse. Ultimately, this is an affirming tale about survival and the transformative power of art. I came away from the book with an enhanced appreciation for the strength underpinning Case’s voice, eagerly anticipating her future projects, which include a forthcoming album later this year as well as a musical adaptation of the 1991 film Thelma and Louise.

The Harder I Fight The More I Love You is available in print, e-book, and e-audiobook. Neko Case also publishes a Substack newsletter called Entering the Lung.

Holly is an Instructor & Research Specialist at HCLS Miller Branch. She enjoys reading widely, knitting sporadically, and baking as often as she gets the chance.