Rosanne Cash

"At the heart of all real country music," writes Rosanne Cash, "lies family." She should know. The first-born daughter of the legendary Johnny Cash has spent more than 30 years as a performer negotiating the potentially toxic trio of her father's legacy, the music business and the public eye. As this aptly titled memoir shows, Cash doggedly "put the work before the worry," and became a musician on her own terms.

Born in 1955 to Johnny's first wife, Vivian Liberto (he would marry June Carter when Rosanne was 12), Cash's childhood was coloured by her mother's anxiety over her father's long absences and drug use. A day out of high school, she began 2 1/2 years touring with Johnny, learning to play guitar from June's sister Helen. (It was during this time, in 1973, that her father scribbled down his list of 100 essential songs, from which Rosanne chose 12 for her 12th studio album, 2009's The List.) Cash broke away in her 20s, doing a stint in London and a few years dabbling in acting before recording her first demo in Germany -- the start of a successful career that would be informed by two marriages and five children, the loss of her voice, brain surgery and, of course, her father's death.

Though Composed occasionally moves confusingly around in time -- and oddly includes full eulogies for Johnny, Vivian and June (and, even more jarringly, details of the author's funeral outfits) -- Cash is a thoughtful writer, most passionate when talking about becoming an artist, and elegant when writing about loss (which she calls "the terrible club to which we all eventually belong"). Her story is moving and relatable, even for those of us who weren't born to the Man in Black.