Azure Ray vocalist Orenda Fink's memoir tells a story of power, perseverance

By nature, memoirs are intensely personal to write. The introspection involved, depending on the subject matter, can prove challenging — which is to say nothing of putting one’s life experiences into words for others to read.

An author who overcomes such mental obstacles to share their experience, however, often has a reward awaiting them on the other side: a deep kinship with readers who can relate. That sense of connection is what Twentynine Palms resident Orenda Fink hopes to achieve with her recently published memoir, “The Witch’s Daughter.”

In 2022, actress Jeanette McCurdy of "iCarly" fame released “I’m Glad My Mom Died,” her own memoir that recounts the abuse she faced at the hands of her mother. McCurdy's book was on the New York Times Best Sellers list for over 50 weeks, helping prove there's an audience for people with difficult childhoods who want to speak their truth. Fink’s memoir, "The Witch's Daughter," continues this broader conversation by telling her story of growing up in a chaotic household with an alcoholic parent.

From one artistic medium to another

Orenda Fink, half of the dream pop duo Azure Ray, has collaborated with many well-known musicians in her career, but her longest musical relationship is with bandmate Maria Taylor. The duo's latest album, “Remedy,” was released in 2021 — 20 years after she and Taylor released their self-titled debut record as Azure Ray.

Although she toured as recently as 2023, music isn't Fink's main priority at the moment. Currently, the artist, writer and certified Jungian Depth Coach is focused on promoting her book, which she wrote from the serene surroundings of her Twentynine Palms home.

"I started the book to make sense of my life and relationship with my family," Fink said. "But as I finished it, I was inspired to help other survivors of childhood trauma make sense of their own lives and feel less isolated in their experiences by sharing my story."

Fink's memoir tells the hauntingly true story of the titular "witch," Fink's mother, who referred to herself as such and believed she and her daughter possessed supernatural powers (she even named her after the Iroquois word for “invisible power”). When Fink’s mother first expressed this belief, Fink felt that power, and the knowledge of the supernatural, reach through all corners of her tempestuous household life.

Fink said she got the idea to write the book almost two decades ago, when a friend encouraged her to recount her childhood. What started as a memoir about her grief over the loss of her dog became a broader recollection of her childhood and relationship with her mother.

Looking back in order to move forward

"The Witch’s Daughter's" first-person prose and storytelling narrates the real impacts of alcoholism and the unseen impact of her mother’s stories of the supernatural, which influenced Fink’s own thought processes as a child. She said the book took her eight years to write, on and off, and she called the process of looking back on her childhood “surreal” and “intense.”

“A lot of things came out without me thinking about it,” Fink said. “At one point, I thought ‘this is going to kill me.’ It was really difficult. It’s almost like going back in time, when you’ve traveled very far from where you came from.”

Fink’s memoir is also the first book she’s ever written. Support from her literary agent, other friends and writers and her sister helped her put the words to paper. Her agent found a publisher for the book at Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster, who gave her the freedom to write on her own terms. Fink quickly realized her preference was to work alone at home, where she has no distractions and could find tranquility among the panoramic vistas and the calmness of vacant desert.

Fink said her childhood experiences, along with musicians and writers she admired as a child, subconsciously influenced underlying themes of hope and heartbreak in the book. Despite her appreciation for these inspirations, she said it’s important for authors and songwriters alike to stay true to themselves.

“You think you know your voice through the way you talk, but it’s hard to find that voice on paper,” Fink said. “You’re influenced as a writer by all your favorite authors and how you read, so you want to learn from them, but you don’t want to copy them. It’s about learning from them, but maintaining your authenticity.”

Fink has come a long way for her childhood home in Alabama. She “can’t say enough good” about her current home, Twentynine Palms, which she also adds will likely be her forever home.

“I feel an incredible amount of gratitude for where I am, but it’s still hard. I think you carry a lot of the pain of a childhood into adulthood, some of it never leaves you. I think a part of healing and moving forward is realizing that it never leaves you.”

Alex Grauel is The Desert Sun's summer 2024 intern. He's a rising senior journalism student at Arizona State University, and a native of Rancho Mirage. You can email Alex at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Azure Ray member Orenda Fink's memoir tells a story of pain, gratitude