As a singer and songwriter, Neko Case is known for her piercing honesty and a powerful voice that can deliver achingly vulnerable lyrics. With her new memoir, The Harder I Fight the More I Love You (Grand Central Publishing, Jan. 28), the indie icon invites readers into the life stories behind the music. Writing in a voice as authentic and startling as her lyrics, Case describes a childhood a few notches below hardscrabble, much of it spent in poverty and neglect in small-town Washington state. 

Case was born in 1970 to teenage parents whose accidental pregnancy with her forced them into a grudging marriage. In the memoir, she describes trying to escape the loneliness of her childhood through her love of fairy tales and nature, especially animals; growing up, she thought of herself as a sort of beast, a creature built of anger and need, not entirely domesticated and unable to find a place in the roles society offered her. She dropped out of high school and later art school but began an education in music, joining multiple bands in Seattle, Chicago, and Canada. Case’s first album was released in 1997; her 2014 album, The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You,was nominated for a Grammy for best alternative music album. She spoke to us from her hotel room in New York, where she’s working on a Broadway musical. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

One of the most striking elements in your childhood was your connection to nature, especially animals. 

I’ve always been really close with nature. There have been times when I didn’t have access to it as much—the years living in Chicago or in Tacoma—but it was always there. I was always noticing it, even if it was little bits and pieces, like a tree growing through a sidewalk.

The happiest period you describe is when you were living in Vermont with your mother and stepfather and got to spend time with a family that showed horses. Then you had to move back to the Northwest with your dad. Do you get sad for the kid that you were then? 

I’m glad that I didn’t quite understand that that wasn’t everybody’s normal. Because I think it would have made me a lot sadder. 

During the school year, you lived with your dad, where poverty and neglect were constants. In junior high, you experienced a lot of cruelty from other kids. But you were also waking up to the outside world, including boys and music. 

It was very confusing. I was more sad that I didn’t think about horses anymore. I was like, I don’t want to like boys. I wanted to like music, for sure. But I didn’t want to like boys in bands. I resented it. 

When you began making music, you started as a drummer, then took up guitar, then began singing and songwriting. Do you have a favorite? 

I really wanted to be a drummer so that’s what I started with. I just wasn’t very good at guitar—my hands are really tiny. I wasn’t making progress on a six-string guitar. I always was a singer first, but it’s not something I would admit to myself.

You write about not liking your voice at first. Do you like your voice now? 

I’ve had a lot of ups and downs in my relationship with my voice. In the beginning I just [sang] because it felt physically and emotionally really good. And then people started telling me I had a good voice. But there was a lot I couldn’t do, so the evidence wasn’t there. My voice wasn’t pretty either; it was very nasal. 

I don’t agree—I think your voice is pretty! 

It’s very nasal and very straight-ahead, which I’m not complaining about. I don’t want to have anybody else’s voice. I just had to figure out what was interesting about my voice and where it fit. 

Would you say music saved you from your difficult childhood? 

It was music and my will. I don’t know where my will came from, or why I have the will I do. I think being a neurodivergent kid probably helped. ADHD helped a lot because I have hyperfocus, and hyperfocus took me to places and pulled the rest of me with it. 

Your father died several years ago. Do you have any contact with your mother? 

No. When you’re not wanted, why stick around? It just makes you feel worse. And you’re just in this weird eddying cycle of like, Oh God, what do I do to get them to like me? It’s like, Why would you want somebody like that to like you?

And there’s a lot of pressure to forgive. You don’t have to forgive anyone that was horrible to you. If they made some genuine effort and you accepted their whatever, that’s fine. But forgiveness is not the holy grail. 

With my father, I have a lot of empathy for him. I forgive him for being messed up and not wanting a kid. He was a Christian, so he figured if he just drank himself to death it wouldn’t be suicide. Well, drinking yourself to death is still suicide. It really devastated a large part of our family. I don’t really forgive him for that.

Do you think that writing about all this stuff will make people mad at you, like the family members you are still in touch with? 

I don’t care. People are always mad at me anyway! Nothing I do is going to change anyone’s love for me, or how they feel about me. I don’t feel bad about it. 

One thing that can be hard for people who had a very difficult childhood is to accept love and to trust it. Have you gotten to a point where you can? 

I didn’t have a romantic partner that was an adult-style relationship until I was probably 45. It took me a long time to trust it, yeah. I definitely was not easy to love, because I’m sure I was always testing everything. I didn’t like myself, either. 

Another thing that finally happened in your 40s was finally getting a horse of your own. Is that as magical as it sounds?

It’s really that magical. It’s like if you were able to lose weight by eating birthday cake. It’s a really good way to learn how to put down anxiety. You’re able to set it down for a second, which eventually teaches you that you don’t have to live in a constant state of anxiety. Horses can’t lie. So if they engage with you in a certain way, you know that you’ve put down your anxiety. 

Do you think that having gone deep into your memory and writing about it in this book will have an impact on your music? 

I don’t know yet—I’m not sure what’ll happen. It felt like writing this book was taking all the memories and putting them in a folder and knowing where they are, which is a comfort. I know where they all are, I know what chapter they’re in. It’s a very Virgo thing. I’m very excited about the newness of the book and about going on a book tour. That’s the most exciting, because I’m going on a tour and I don’t have to play music! 

Kate Tuttle is a writer and editor in New Jersey.