I Am Jennie: A Memoir

A self-excoriating, fairly raunchy memoir from a former porn star recounts her struggle to come clean and change her life, despite the powerful lure of money, sex, and drugs. Known in the adult entertainment industry as Penny Flame since she was a college freshman at San Diego State University, Ketcham entered the Pasadena Recovery Center in 2009 as part of the motley celebrity crew for the reality TV show Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew, where she went by her real name for 19 days and found the experience excruciating but transformative. While “Penny was not a real person and could disappear,” she writes with a smarting frankness, “Jennie could be stalked, captured, and hurt, all very easily.” Her bits in recovery alternate with chapters that delineate very explicitly how she gradually moved from taking off her clothes for photo shoots for, among others, Hustler and Cher to girl-on-girl sex scenes and the hardcore boy-girl videos that brought porn-star recognition and raked in money for her, promptly spent on drugs and a fancy car. Lying to the men in her life became an enormous problem, and Ketcham reaches back to her memories of childhood growing up in the California suburbs with divorced parents and a heavy-drinking mom to trace patterns of promiscuity brought on by intimacy issues. Directing her own movies for one of the porn outfits, Shane’s World, helped her gain a sense of autonomy. Ketcham’s unflinching, clear-eyed desire to be “a normal girl with realistic dreams” rings with a vulnerable poignancy. (Aug.)