Emancipated long before anybody had heard of it, she escaped her family to save [her] life. The life that is recounted in Daddy's Girl is harrowing, yet the memoir is distinguished by Allen's heroic efforts to rescue and support herself, by herself. This memoir emphasizes - in addition to a commitment not to live life as a "walking wound" - the power of language.

Allen has always believed in the potency of words; she began writing as a child, and used notes to communicate with women she admired. She began writing fiction in order to get Daddy's Girl published, which supports the idea (central to confessional writers), that the self may be transformed by the self-in-writing.