In a city built on survival, one young boy learns the cost of staying alive—and what it takes to finally start living.

Philadelphia in the 1980s was no place for the soft-hearted. For Chaz Holesworth, childhood meant dodging gangs, addiction, and silence after slammed doors. His father’s world ran on heroin, his mother’s on holy fear.

Caught between two extremes, sin and salvation, Chaz learned early on how to disappear: keep your head down, don’t ask questions, and pray someone notices you anyway.

But everything changed the day he discovered music. In R.E.M., Tori Amos, and Nirvana, he hears something no sermon ever offered: truth, raw and imperfect. As his home life spiraled and his faith fractured, those lyrics became lifelines, every note pulling him closer to the one thing he never had: his own identity.

What happens when the noise outside becomes louder than the voice inside?

Or when loyalty to broken people starts to break you too?

Unflinching and darkly funny, Life and How to Live It: Volume One is more than a coming-of-age memoir: It’s a portrait of grit, grief, poverty, and the fragile beauty of hope born from chaos. Chaz Holesworth’s story captures the pulse of Philadelphia’s rough-edged streets and the soundtrack that kept him alive as he battled lost faith, family dysfunction, and his father’s addiction.

For anyone who’s ever grown up in the wreckage of someone else’s choices, Chaz’s story is proof that you can still build something beautiful from the debris.