Excerpt from The True Happiness Company by Veena Dinavahi, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Bob Lyon looked like a giant, unamused teddy bear when I showed up in his living room that day. "Living room" was a misnomer: nothing about that room inspired the will to live. Instead of the framed diplomas you'd find on the walls of a typical psychologist's office, his walls boasted gold-framed animal prints—one of a Siamese cat and another of two intertwined peacocks. The two couches formed an L shape facing the center of the room. A plastic chandelier was fixed to a stippled ceiling overlooked by the past two decades of decorating trends. To my left sat a textured gold floor lamp that looked like it worked weekends at the Olive Garden. A tiny statue of Jesus on his fireplace was the only indication that he was Mormon—but I wouldn't learn of this fact for another four years.

In the center of the room sat Bob, this big, old white man in a rocking chair. The chair was wooden, the kind you'd expect to find on a wraparound porch with Buffalo Bill kicking up his cowboy boots, resting a rifle on his lap. Bob wore an untucked plaid shirt and blue jeans. He wore no shoes, just thick, white socks. My first impression of him was "redneck." This is also my final impression, though my feelings toward him have taken a wild detour to arrive back where they started.

"You're right. You don't have to do anything. But," he said lightly, "I know something you don't."

"Okay." I knew I was being set up. Still, I wanted to get to the punch line more than I wanted to fight. "What?" I conceded.

His eyes bored into me with such intensity that I felt like I'd been caught naked on the shoulder of the expressway. I wet my lips and averted my eyes.

"I know how to be happy." He spoke quietly now. "Look, kid, you're stuck here for three days. Your parents won't let you leave. You're welcome to go back downstairs and watch TV. Or go outside and walk the grounds. We've got some nice woods out here and a lake behind the house. But you are so miserable that your life couldn't possibly get any worse. You've got absolutely nothing to lose."

That was it. His big pitch. Looking back, I did have things to lose: my agency, my values, the sanctity of my body. How could I have known that a shot at his version of happiness meant trading it all in?

In the eight years that I was in his orbit, he would recount this story of how we met so many times, to so many different people, that it became canon in the True Happiness community. He'd emphasize how I "flounced" to convey my spunk and how much he liked it: She didn't just sit, she flounced. He'd flick his wrists to illustrate my miniskirt bouncing onto the pleather surface of his couch. Then he'd point to the corner where I sat. Here, he'd interrupt himself to observe how he remembered exactly where everyone had sat the first time they'd met him. He always phrased it that way: they met him. There was an air of immutability and pleasant anticipation in his telling. The meeting of two great minds.

But very different feelings pervade my memory of our first meeting. Anger, as I climbed into the back of my mom's minivan in our Maryland suburb. Resentment, as the ride progressed, and I approximated how far south we had traveled by averaging the number of Cracker Barrel signs on the roadside. Fear, as we pulled into a nondescript driveway in the middle of nowhere at midnight. Disbelief, as my mom fished a crumpled piece of paper out of her handbag and smoothed it against the dash, insisting she had instructions to "follow the lighted stairs to the basement guest quarters." Unease, as I watched my parents disembark and do as they were told.

I did not choose to be in his living room, but choices become limited when you have spent the past three and a half years sort of trying to die. There is some debate over whether my actions were suicide attempts or suicidal gestures. I am unclear on the distinction here. All I can tell you is that killing yourself is harder than it sounds. Between the ages of fifteen and nineteen, I swallowed pills over and over. I drank ant poison (doesn't work on mammals). I tried to hang myself but didn't know how to secure the rope to the ceiling.

Excerpted from The True Happiness Company by Veena Dinavahi. Copyright © 2025 by Veena Dinavahi. Excerpted by permission of Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.