Tag: abuse

fantasy · fiction · horror

Book Review: Rose Madder by Stephen King

Stephanie1 Comment

It’s rare for me to reread anything. I usually have such a healthy, flourishing TBR (and so little time!) that I rarely glance behind me, in a reading sense, even when there’s times I’d really, really like to. And that’s the beauty of this year’s Pop Sugar Reading Challenges. Not only has it been pushing me hard to read outside my comfort zone, it’s also allowing me to do a few rereads. First up, to mark off the prompt of a book that I read more than ten years ago, I picked up a favorite – we’re talking a MAJOR favorite – from when I was a teenager in the mid-90’s, around fifteen or sixteen years old: Rose Madder by Stephen King (Hodder & Stoughton, 1995). I don’t think this is one of King’s better-known books, but it had a lot to say to me as a teenager, and rereading this was a really interesting trip down memory lane.

Trigger warnings for spousal abuse, graphic miscarriage, rape, violence, racial, sexual and gender-based slurs, and murder.

Rose Madder opens on a scene of horrific violence: Rose McClendon is miscarrying a much-longed-for baby after yet another terrible beating at the hands of her husband, Norman, a police officer. Flash forward nine years later, nothing has changed, and a glimpse of a single spot of blood on her side of the bed wakes her up long enough to understand the consequences of staying married to such a man. Rosie flees, taking a bus to an unnamed Midwestern city, and begins a new life at Daughters and Sisters, a women’s shelter for women leaving abusive situations. 

Starting over from nothing isn’t easy, but Rosie’s new friends, a job changing sheets at a hotel, and a rented room are enough, and soon, a new job offer and the attention of a new and gentle man named Bill Steiner turn her life into more than she could ever have dreamed. A mysterious painting of a ruined temple and a blond woman, purchased from Bill’s pawn shop, begin speaking to Rosie, and not a moment too soon: Norman’s desperate search for his wife, to make her pay for abandoning him, is bringing him closer and closer, and threatening everything Rosie’s built. 

What I remember appealing to me so much as a teenager were the emotions of this book: the fear Rosie felt, the horror that was Norman (who is actually even worse than I remembered), the newfound wonder of a life rebuilt and the first blossoming of love after so much pain and terror. Back at fifteen, I thought Bill Steiner was just the swooniest character out there; as an adult, I see that he didn’t have quite as big of a role in this story as I thought I remembered. This is Rosie’s story, and Norman’s: the narrative is split between the two, with the main narration going to Rosie, and Norman’s barely sane voice chiming in every now and then.

Good hell, can Stephen King write an abusive husband. Norman is one of the scariest characters I’ve ever read, one of the most dangerous. His scenes scared me more as an adult than I ever remember being scared as a teen. Another thing that really struck me is how much more difficult Rosie’s escape would’ve been today. She arrived at the shelter and her stay was fairly brief, thanks to being able to rent a room which she could afford on wages earned under the table as a hotel maid (there was also talk of supporting herself waitressing or possibly running a cash register somewhere; there were training sessions on this at the shelter, mentioned briefly). And Rosie had no children to support. How much more difficult, or even impossible, is it for Rosies today to flee such terrible situations and maintain any kind of life? Can women with zero work history, no skills, and a child or several, even manage at all? Thinking about this just depressed me further while reading this book.

It was really interesting, though, to see how much this book has affected my own writing. There were a lot of lines here and there that I remembered, and a few scenes that I hadn’t even remembered but that influenced a few things I’ve written (mostly an unpublished novel about a young woman rebuilding her life after leaving an abusive relationship. Yeah. This book had that much of affect on me!). A few times, I’d turn a page, read a line or a paragraph, and would be immediately thrown back into my teenage bedroom. If nothing else, finding my way back to this book has really reminded me of the magic of rereading.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the ending back then, and I’m still not now, though I understand it much better. No spoilers, but I do think it works a lot better reading it as an adult. If you’ve read this book, I’m curious as to your take on the ending, or on anything about this book. It’ll always be one of my favorites, both because of my history with it, and because of the strong emotions King has managed to make come alive throughout.

Visit Stephen King’s website here.

Follow him on Twitter here.

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memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: Uncultured by Daniella Mestyanek Young

Stephanie1 Comment

A recent trip to the library had me frustrated that so many of the books I wanted were checked out (solely because I’m trying to get through a reading challenge here, people! Otherwise, read on with your bad selves), so as I was examining the new books shelves, wondering if a few of the selections from my list were maybe there, I ran across a book NOT in the reading challenge, but still on my TBR: Uncultured: A Memoir by Daniella Mestyanek Young (St. Martin’s Press, 2022). This was one I was really looking forward to, so reading challenge be damned! I snatched that book up and started reading the next day.

Trigger warnings: sexual abuse and rape of minors and adults, physical abuse, military situations and death

Daniella grew up in the cult known as Children of God and known these days as The Family International. What this cult amounted to was a Christian group dedicated to child rape, with its members taught to share God’s love through sex, and that this was okay, normal, and behavior desirable to God. Daniella, whose own mother gave birth to her at 14, grew up suffering extreme physical and sexual abuse in the name of God. Her intelligence and drive for education (piecemeal at best in the cult) keep her going, and by the age of fifteen, she’s had enough. Daniella is able to leave and live in the United States with a sibling she doesn’t know well, and live life on her own terms.

But life on the outside after having grown up in such a closed-off, high control group, isn’t simple or easy, and after college, she finds herself in the clutches of another high control group: the US Army. Just like the cult, Daniella’s every action is controlled. Her time, her thoughts, her opinions, her activities, every part of her life is someone else’s decision. She’s able to thrive there, but the similarities between the cult and the Army become too much later on, and just like the cult, the Army is easily able to throw her under the bus without a second thought.

Whew. This is an intense read. I’d never thought of the military and cults as using similar control tactics, but this is a comparison that makes absolute sense, and as a former military wife, I’m kind of shocked at myself that I never made this connection before. It also makes sense as to how so many people from strict-ER forms of Christianity wind up in the military (I say strict-ER because the super high control groups like IFB and IBLP, for example, don’t seem to have any kind of tradition of encouraging military service among their members, something that many of the discussion groups I participate in online have noticed). At the time that she joined, Daniella thought that the Army was what she wanted; though she does incredibly well for quite some time, it ends up not being the home she’d been looking for.

Her descriptions of always feeling like an outsider, of being a third culture kid and never quite fitting in anywhere, are nearly as devastating as the descriptions of the PTSD and physical symptoms she suffers from after years of physical, sexual, and emotional torture. Her innate strength is what carries her through; she comes close to ending it several times, and my heart broke over and over again while reading this book.

There’s maybe a little more in here about Ms. Young’s time in the Army than there is about growing up in a cult, but the striking similarities between the two groups, and how her abuse and exploitation continued while serving, will keep you turning pages. Being in the military is tough; being a woman in the military and serving combat missions is even tougher, for many reasons, and seeing how her childhood parallels to the treatment she received while serving is…unsettling at best.

This is an eye-opening book, and one that will leave you shaking your head and pondering a lot of the questions Ms. Young has raised.

Visit Daniella Mestyanek Young’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

Stephanie3 Comments

I needed a celebrity memoir for the 2023 Popsugar Reading Challenge, and what do you know, on my TBR was I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (Simon & Schuster, 2021). Jennette is best known for playing Sam Puckett on the Nickelodeon show iCarly, but she’s also a talented writer. I started learning of her toxic relationship with her mother at the beginning of the pandemic, when an article she’d written made the rounds, and, having watched all of iCarly with my son and now my daughter, I was horrified. I knew I’d eventually want to read her memoir, but the wait lists at my library were miles long, so I was prepared to be patient. However, I got lucky, and the book pulled me in so strongly that I finished it in hours. Drop whatever you’re currently reading and get a copy of this book. NOW.

Jennette McCurdy was raised by a toxic narcissist mother who physically, emotionally, and sexually abused her her entire childhood. Mother Debra was a cancer survivor and often used this status to gain favors and sympathy from everyone around her. The book opens on a scene where she’s going through the nightly ritual of making her children watch her goodbye video she had recorded for them when she wasn’t expected to survive, and criticizing their behavior on the screen (never mind that they were all younger and already traumatized). Acting had been Debra’s dream, never Jennette’s, and she pushed her daughter into it and began to live vicariously through her. Jennette, already feeling responsible for managing her mother’s emotions from her preschool years, does her best to smile through the auditions and performances that she hates to keep her mother happy.

As Jennette grows, her mother teaches her to have an eating disorder in order to stay small, so she can play younger roles, since Jennette’s work is paying the family’s bills. This, combined with the stress of a career as a child AND managing her narcissist mother’s emotions, has terrible effects on Jennette’s mental health, and the constant criticism and stress of working in Hollywood only add to it all. When Debra’s cancer returns and ends her life, Jennette, left without the ability to manage any of her emotions and without the knowledge of who she is without her mother, spirals.

Every chapter of this book will reach out and grip you by the throat, then punch you in the gut, then tear your heart out and stomp it flat. The devastation that Jennette’s mother wreaked upon her life easily explains the provocative title (my daughter saw the title and was shocked; I simply explained to her that not everyone is lucky enough to have parents that treat them well, that some kids have parents who hurt them, and she understood and was sad). I absolutely blew through this masterpiece of a book, but I spent the entire time just devastated for Jennette. We watch a lot of iCarly around here, and it hurts me to know not only what she was going through when filming those scenes, but that she didn’t even want to be there in the first place. I’m so sad for everything Jennette McCurdy has suffered.

I’m also furious at Hollywood, like ragingly burn-it-all-the-fuck-down, STOP-USING-CHILDREN-IN-TELEVISION-AND-MOVIES furious. Jennette was hideously exploited, used, and abused by SO many adults in her work life, adults who were ultimately there to make money and who weren’t going to let something as silly as the mental and physical health of children get in their way. How disgusting are we that we KNOW this is a problem, it’s been a problem for a long time, and yet we continue to look the other way. If this book doesn’t make you think twice about Hollywood and children participating in it, I don’t know what will. As someone who grew up loving Nickelodeon, I’m utterly disgusted by how deeply soulless that network has turned out to be.

Jennette’s on the road to recovery. It’s not a smooth path, but, as she says, it’s important to not let the slips become slides, something I can deeply relate to. She’s a remarkable person, and I’m 100% cheering her on.

This is a deeply powerful memoir, one of the most powerful I’ve ever read. Emotional and physical devastation on every page, and yet Jennette’s writing will propel you through the pages at rocket speed. I’ve read that even people who weren’t aware of who Jennette McCurdy was before this book were as similarly affected as I was, so even if you’ve never watched a single episode of iCarly, this is one book you do NOT want to miss. I cannot state how strongly this book touched me, and how much I deeply wish that Jennette McCurdy is able to heal and cultivate the future she wants and needs.

Amazing, amazing book. If I could give it a hundred thousand stars, I would. 

Content warnings exist for physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, eating disorders, sexual exploitation, illness and death of a parent, and emotional trauma. 

Visit Jennette McCurdy’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

fiction

Book Review: Girl A by Abigail Dean

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I somehow missed the nightmare Turpin case when it broke, but I’ve followed it ever since I learned about it (my God. Those poor kids). So when I learned about Girl A by Abigail Dean (Viking, 2021), a novel that seemed like a fictionalized account of the Turpin story, set in Great Britain, it went onto my list. It took for-ev-er for this to actually be in at the library, however; seems as though everyone in my town is just as horrified by that story as I am.

Girl A is Alexandra, or Lex, the eldest daughter and second eldest child of the Gracie family, where eight children were discovered, chained and emaciated, living in unbelievable filth. She’s the one who escaped, who dropped from a second-story window and broke her leg in the process, but who saved her other siblings. Her father poisoned himself before the police showed up, and Mom went to prison; now, at the beginning of the story, Lex is an adult, a lawyer, traveling back to England from New York City, to deal with her mother’s death.

The story jumps back and forth in time, from what happened leading up to the dramatic rescue of the Gracie children, to how growing up in such terrible conditions affected the children as adults. Some have fared better than others; no one has made it out unscathed.

This is a hard book to describe. None of the adult Gracie children are particularly likeable; some of them are a bit frightening in their ability to manipulate. Several are just tragic. It’s hard to get a full read on Lex, since she’s so damaged and deals with that damage by drinking a lot. A revelation later on in the book had me questioning pretty much everything about her, and the murky conclusion didn’t help matters at all.

I enjoyed the storytelling of this novel, but I wish there had been more concrete conclusions, and that it had felt more solid as a whole. If you’ve read this, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Visit Abigail Dean’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: Chosen: A Memoir of Stolen Boyhood by Stephen Mills

Stephanie1 Comment

Trigger warning: this review will contain mention of childhood sexual assault. If this is a subject that’s too painful for you to read about, be kind to yourself and skip this review. I wish you peace.

I received a notification of a new Twitter follower one day not long ago and was delighted to find an author named Stephen Mills had followed me. One of his recent tweets made it clear that he was also Jewish (WOOHOO!), so I followed him back and added his book to my TBR. And when Chosen: A Memoir of Stolen Boyhood (Metropolitan Books, 2022) showed up on NetGalley, I requested it. I know I read a lot of emotionally heavy books, but it’s because I believe so much that these are the stories that deserve to be heard the most; these are the topics that need to be at the forefront of our discussions; these are what everyone should understand a little more about. And Chosen is no exception to that rule.

Thank you so much to NetGalley, Stephen Mills, and Metropolitan Books for offering me a copy of Chosen in exchange for an honest review.

Stephen Mills was thirteen, the son of a father who had passed away when he was very young, growing up in an emotionally unhealthy blended family, when the director of his summer camp began spending more time with him. Longing for positive attention and approval (and aren’t we all?), Stephen falls into his trap, and soon Dan is molesting him regularly. Not only is Stephen deeply confused about what’s happening to him, his trauma is furthered by Dan’s weaseling his way into every aspect of his life. His family loves him and has no qualms about sending the young teen on solo trips and foreign vacations with Dan, and without the words to describe what’s going on, Stephen is powerless to stop the abuse.

It’s not until college when the trauma begins destroying his life. Still unable to speak about the abuse, Stephen turns to drugs, to religion, to foreign travel, in order to ease his pain, but nothing helps, and the darkness begins to pull him in. As society begins to wake up to the pervasiveness of childhood sexual abuse, Stephen is finally able to understand the root of his anguish…only to discover that those with the power to change things still don’t give anywhere near enough of a damn.

Chosen is a painful, heartfelt memoir that doesn’t hold back on raw emotion. Mr. Mills doesn’t shy away from the physical acts perpetrated against him, nor does he sugarcoat the depth of his suffering that the abuse caused. ‘Soul murder,’ Oprah Winfrey has called childhood sexual abuse, and it’s clear from this memoir, from how much Stephen suffered as an adult from the trauma foisted upon him as a child, how accurate this phrase is.

As difficult as the subject is, Stephen Mills’s writing flows like the most enjoyable novel. His honest prose is open, accessible, inviting the reader to share his pain for a while, to walk in his shoes and gain just a hint of understanding about what he’s been through. It’s a story of pain, but also one of courage, and ultimately, a demand for change. We have got to do better. More listening to kids, better treatment for survivors, and a never-ending commitment to keeping the monsters who hurt them away from any children whatsoever for all time. We can do better, and we should have started doing better a long time ago. Chosen is proof of that. Stephen Mills was failed over and over again by so many adults in his life, and while he’s written an amazing book that shares his pain and trauma in the most eloquent of ways, I truly wish he hadn’t had to.

If you love someone who has suffered childhood sexual abuse, Chosen by Stephen Mills should be on your reading list in order to better understand that loved one, what they’ve faced in trying to heal, and what they’re up against in seeking justice. And if you don’t know anyone who’s been traumatized this way, Chosen should also be on your list – because yes, you do; they just haven’t told you.

May Stephen Mills experience continued healing throughout his life, and may justice well up like water, righteousness like an unfailing stream for all survivors.  

Chosen is available now at all major retailers.

Visit Stephen Mills’s website here.

Follow him on Twitter here.

nonfiction · true crime

Book Review: The Family Next Door: The Heartbreaking Imprisonment of the Thirteen Turpin Siblings and Their Extraordinary Rescue by John Glatt

Stephanie5 Comments

Do you ever look back and wonder how you missed out on major news stories? I’m old enough to remember the Challenger explosion, but I have no memories of it. I’m not sure if that’s because my parents shielded me from the awfulness of it, or because it wasn’t much on their radar, but nope, I don’t remember it at all. The more recent story of the Turpin family is similar for me. I vaguely knew who they were- a mega-family who had at least some sort of Christian trappings who ended up abusing the kids terribly- but somehow the details of this story remained off my radar. But someone on a messageboard where I lurk suggested The Family Next Door: The Heartbreaking Imprisonment of the Thirteen Turpin Siblings and Their Extraordinary Rescue by John Glatt (St. Martin’s Press, 2019), and I knew I needed to read it in order to fill in the gaps (I think things were so crazy politically at the time that all my attention was going to other things, and that’s how this one slipped by me. We can’t pay attention to everything…)

In early 2018, a 17 year-old girl, whose physical appearance made her appear closer to ten years of age, secretly dialed 911 to report that her parents were abusing her and her twelve siblings, several of whom had been chained to their beds for months. When the police arrived at the house, what they found was nearly beyond belief. Children from the ages of two to their late twenties who hadn’t bathed or changed clothing in over a year, in various stages of starvation, cachexia, and psychosocial dwarfism.  None of them had ever visited a dentist; doctor visits had rarely happened. Most of them displayed severe signs of abuse. None of the neighbors realized there were that many kids living in the house, because most of the children never left. The oldest had been pulled out of third grade in public school; they had all been ‘homeschooled’ since, but most of them had less than a first-grade education, even the adults (the daughter who had called 911 had even misspelled her own last name).

The kids were taken and hospitalized; the parents were sent to jail to await trial. The children, even the adults, were badly stunted in physical and social development; educationally, they were all years behind (with the exception of the two-year-old, who was, while still not perfect, in better shape than anyone else). The younger children eventually went to (I believe) a foster home; the adult children went to a secret home to begin focusing on all the things they needed to learn to function as adults, since none of them were even remotely able to care for themselves. The parents were eventually convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison; the children will be battling the effects of the torture their parents afflicted upon them forever (at least two of the girls are unlikely to be able to have children themselves, so extensive was the damage they’ve suffered).

If you followed the case as it unfolded, there probably isn’t anything new here, but if you’re like me and missed this, it’s a good primer as to what happened. I hadn’t really known any of the details, so it was a worthwhile (if horrifying) read. My heart broke over and over again for the damage these kids have suffered (I refer to them as kids, but the oldest is in her early 30’s by now; the youngest is maybe 5 or 6). Their parents stunted their entire lives; whatever they go on to do, it’ll be in spite of their parents, not because of them, and though they may heal, even in the best-case scenario, there will still be massive, massive scars. I’m so sad for all of them.

There are several fundamentalist mega-families on my radar (not the Duggars; we already know what a mess they’ve made…) that have exhibited strong Turpin-esque qualities. One has stated she’s not worried about her homeschooled kids obtaining ‘worldly knowledge;’ in a recent video the mom posted, her oldest kids (somewhere around 11 or 12) didn’t know what year it was or who the President was (both questions my seven-year-old answered immediately with no help). The other family’s kids are very obviously malnourished and the quality of their ‘homeschooling’ has looked pretty poor as well. (I’m a former homeschooling parent; even when I was actively homeschooling, I wished there were better oversight. If you’re doing what you need to be doing, a yearly check-in to make sure your kid is on track is no big deal, and I made my kiddo WORK. Better oversight would have prevented the Turpins from ruining their kids, and it would keep those other families I’m thinking of from inflicting potentially irreversible damage on their children. It’s incredibly difficult to become a functional adult when you were denied the skills it takes to be one throughout your entire childhood.)

The writing in this book isn’t anything special; it’s a really fast read, though a depressing one. You’ll be horrified and disgusted and heartbroken through the whole thing. I pray those kids are able to repair what their parents worked so hard to destroy, and to create beautiful, functional lives for themselves, and that this world makes a safe, patient space for all of them.

Visit John Glatt’s website here.

Follow him on Twitter here.

memoir

The Truth Book: Escaping a Childhood of Abuse Among Jehovah’s Witnesses- Joy Castro

Stephanie3 Comments

The Truth Book: Escaping a Childhood of Abuse Among Jehovah’s Witnesses by Joy Castro is another book that’s been hanging out on my Goodreads TBR list for…a while. Ages ago, I had my TBR list in a notebook; then I switched to keeping everything bookmarked in a favorites file on my laptop; finally, after my daughter was born in 2014 and spending approximately 87 hours a day nursing, I used that time to transfer all those books over to Goodreads, and there this book sat, waiting for me to get to it.

I’ve read books by former Jehovah’s Witnesses in the past and other than one (Deliverance at Hand: The Redemption of a Devout Jehovah’s Witness by James Zimmerman), they’ve tended to make me shy away from reading more because they’re all so…bleak. Grim. There’s so little joy in their lives, what with the inability to celebrate holidays, birthdays, etc (every other religion, with maaaaaaybe the exception of Christian Science, it’s enjoyable for me to read about, because there are good things about all of them. Celebrations, feast days, holidays, happiness, joy. All of that is sorely lacking in descriptions of life as a Jehovah’s Witness). Their lives all seem full of nothing but church service after service and drudgery, and although I understood exactly why they left, it didn’t inspire me to read the next ex-JW memoir. The Truth Book is a little different though, as it’s not a straightforward leaving-a-religion memoir.

Joy Castro was adopted into a family that was very active in the Jehovah’s Witnesses church (moreso on her mother’s part than her father’s. He is disfellowshipped- basically excommunicated- for smoking when Joy is young). Her father was fun-loving, always up for a spur-of-the-moment trip to wherever his job with the airlines could ferry them; her mother never ceased to have a sharp, biting comment for or about Joy. Her brother Tony is born when she’s five, and five years after that, her parents divorce due to her father’s serial cheating. It’s when her mother remarries to a man Joy never names that Joy and Tony’s true nightmare begins.

This man is a fellow Witness, a respected leader in their church, but almost immediately, he begins beating Joy and Tony with a belt, punching and kicking them, and of course being verbally creepy with Joy (including in front of Mom, drawing her into these conversations as well). He comes up with complicated rules that the children must follow and beats them if they make a mistake. He holds Joy down and cuts her hair when a piece slips out of place. He comes up with a system of doling out food that ensures the children will starve: he is allowed a double portion of food (because of course he is), Mom gets one portion, Joy gets a quarter of what Mom gets, and Tony gets 1/8 of what Mom gets. If Mom gives him more than that, the stepfather beats him with a belt. In the two years she lives with him, Joy doesn’t grow at all and loses 16 pounds.

The horror doesn’t stop there, and here’s where the trigger warnings come in: while she never writes of explicit, outright sexual abuse, it’s clear that there is MAJORLY inappropriate touching going on, including forced undressing, and some inappropriate photos as well. In one of the most horrifying scenes, Mom professes weariness due to her husband’s sexual appetite and appears to be considering either asking Joy to help him out or offering Joy up to him, when the last time her daughter complained of her stepfather’s touching, Mom’s reply was, “Ridiculous. What would any man see in you?”

I try to keep an open mind, and at first this memoir seemed to be of abusive parents who happened to be Jehovah’s Witnesses (rather than the abuse being related to them being Witnesses), but about halfway through, she tells another Witness family of everything that’s going with her stepfather, and then later tells the church elders.

No one does anything.

Not a single person.

They knew everything that was going on and did nothing. The church elders even told her, after hearing about her stepfather’s physical and sexual abuse, that Joy’s role as a child and a girl is to submit to her stepfather. This, in my eyes, is pure, unadulterated evil, and those who see the abuse and ignore it are no better than the abusers.

Joy is eventually able to escape, going to live with the father whom her stepfather had turned her against, and her brother follows six months later, not without some drama. Life isn’t exactly perfect there either, but it does improve, and the fact that Joy and her brother have survived and become any kind of functioning adults, let alone adults who flourish, is nothing short of a miracle. What they survived was monstrous.

Hearing Ms. Castro recount her stepfather’s horrific abuse and the disgusting way her mother stood by and let it happen made for a rage-inducing read. Multiple times, I had to set the book down and seethe; what kind of parent does that? I would’ve better understood if Joy’s mother had been in dire financial straits before marrying him, but she owned half of what sounded like a successful business (selling it and giving her creep of a husband all the money and becoming a stay-at-home wife at his behest, of course). Due to her church forbidding divorce except in cases of adultery, she stayed, and that infuriates me, for so, so many reasons.

This is another tough read (I seem to be doing a lot of those lately; I think I need a breather after this). I didn’t learn anything new about growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness that I hadn’t already known (Deliverance at Hand, which I mentioned before, is a more thorough example of that if you’re interested in understand more about the specifics of the religion), but I now understand how deeply the church can affect a parent and what it makes them willing to tolerate and sacrifice in order to remain a loyal member. What a shame, for all of us, that so many people are willing to forfeit their children’s health and physical safety for the hope of a better afterlife. I don’t judge much, but I do judge that, and harshly, because everyone has the right to grow up safe and protected and loved. I wish Ms. Castro and her brother all the peace in the world, and for their being surrounded only by people who love and care deeply for them.

Visit Joy Castro’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

fiction · YA

We’ll Fly Away- Bryan Bliss

Stephanie3 Comments

It is easy to forgive the innocent. It is the guilty who test our morality. People are more than the worst thing they’ve ever done.

                                                                    -Sister Helen Prejean

If you’re looking for a book that reaches out and punches you in the gut until you’re doubled over and gasping for air, We’ll Fly Away by Bryan Bliss is the book you need.

Luke and Toby are high school seniors, two best friends whom every adult has failed miserably their entire lives. Luke’s dad took off years ago, leaving him with his piss-poor excuse for a mother who constantly leaves zero food in the house and five-year-old twin brothers for whom he’s majorly responsible. Toby’s dad uses him as his personal punching bag, something the teachers at school pretend not to notice. It’s always been Luke and Toby, the only ones looking out for each other, and they’ve got plans: Luke’s got a wrestling scholarship to Iowa next year and they’ll both be gone then, leaving North Carolina and all the many ways it’s hurt them behind.

But it’s never quite as simple as that. With the introduction of Annie, a new girl from Chicago, Luke and Toby’s friendship is tested for the first time, and Toby finds himself looking for comfort and approval in places he knows he shouldn’t. Things aren’t getting any easier for Luke, either; he’s got the wrestling match of the year coming up, and his mom has brought home a new boyfriend (an adult who calls himself Ricky; I’ll let you infer what kind of guy he is). Toby’s dad gives him a car, but of course there’s a catch; Mom and Ricky disappear; Toby starts hanging around with an older woman whom Luke knows isn’t good for him. All these events lead up to a terrible conclusion, one that’s made known at the start of the book: Luke is writing letters to Toby, the only way he can communicate with him, because Luke is on Death Row.

There’s a bit of a twist at the end that I think most readers will see coming long before its arrival. What we’re truly kept guessing, though, is exactly what Luke has done in order to end up with a death sentence hanging over his head. There’s an obvious answer, but his life is full of so many horrible people (whom Mr. Bliss is careful to never let become caricatures) that the obvious answer just wasn’t the only one. After I finished the book, I logged it in my Goodreads account, then went upstairs and burst into tears in the bathroom.

This is an emotionally heavy story that will rip your heart out, Indiana Jones-style, and run it over a few times with the lawn mower for good measure. Almost every facet of Luke and Toby’s lives is a tragedy; their only escape from the grueling horror of their everyday reality is their time together, often spent in a secret hideout in the woods. But as things change for them, there’s a new, fresh heartbreak on every page, and you’ll be met with the stark realization of exactly how we treat children who have been failed every step of the way: as so much garbage which we’re eager to be rid of, cheering on their deaths as we do.

Back in the ’90s, I read Dead Man Walking: The Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty That Sparked a National Debate by Sister Helen Prejean (normal reading for a 14-year-old? Probably not), which sparked a lifelong interest in prison, how prisoners are treated, and an opposition to the death penalty. So when I saw We’ll Fly Away as a suggestion for Book Riot’s 2019 Read Harder Challenge (as an epistolary novel), as soon as I read the synopsis, I was in. And I wasn’t disappointed, although I’m still in tears over the story, and the injustice of it all. I don’t think this is a book I’ll get over anytime soon, nor do I think I’m meant to. This is the kind of book that stays with you forever, and maybe it’s the kind of book that will have you reconsidering the way you look at the people around you.

We’ll Fly Away reads easy but it isn’t an easy read, and I don’t think there are words for how deeply I recommend this. Read it with a box of tissues nearby, along with some anger management skills, because you’ll need both.

Visit Bryan Bliss’s website here.

Follow him on Twitter here.

fiction

The Magdalen Girls- V.S. Alexander

Stephanie3 Comments

My first fiction of the year, and it was everything I look for in a novel.

The best kind of fiction, in my opinion, makes me feel something. It entertains, of course, and it educates, but above all, it stirs up deep emotion. The Magdalen Girls by V.S. Alexander does all of that.

Narrated by several characters, The Magdalen Girls is set in Ireland in the early 1960’s. Teagan Tiernan is 16, navigating life with an alcoholic father and a doormat mother, only to find herself the object of the new parish priest’s lustful attention. Nora Craven, a more headstrong teenager, throws herself at the boy who just dumped her, meeting the wrath of her sharp-tongued parents when they walk in on her. Through no real fault of their own, both girls end up tossed away like so much garbage at the Magdalen Laundry of the Sisters of the Holy Redemption, forced to slave away in silence in terrible conditions, with no pay, inadequate food, where every last bit of their identity is stripped away and they are reminded of their status as sinners at every step. Teagan and Nora befriend each other, bringing another girl, Lea, a favorite of the nuns, into their confidence as well.

Escape plans are hatched, implemented and foiled; the entire community and all of society views them the same way as the Sisters do, as irredeemable trash whose only hope is to work themselves to the bone in order for God to forgive them. They’re starved, beaten, burned, sprayed with freezing water, all in the name of God and redemption. Tragedy follows the girls at every corner, and while redemption does finally come for one, it’s at a terrible, terrible cost.

The Magdalen Girls brought tears to my eyes and made my hands shake with rage. I’d known about the laundries before I read this book, but not quite the full extent of their horror. Full disclosure: I was raised Catholic and attended Catholic school growing up, but- shocker- we were never taught about these. I first learned of them when they were discussed on a parenting messageboard I participated in in my early 20’s (at that point, I hadn’t considered myself Catholic for some time), and was horrified. And my horror has only grown the more I’ve learned about them.

Apparently, sexual sin in Ireland at this time was akin to murder, and even sexual thoughts were enough to condemn a young girl. While some of the women forced into the laundries were prostitutes, others were rape or incest victims; still others were so pretty that they were considered at risk for sexual sin and were locked away on that charge alone. Pregnant women were forced to give their babies up for adoption- there was no other option- and some women were imprisoned in the laundries for life. Those who were allowed out found themselves ill-prepared for life on the outside, with no education, no job skills, and no social skills, since the nuns forbade talking. Many, if not all, left more damaged (physically, sexually, and emotionally) than when they first entered.

When I was twelve, Sinead O’Connor performed on Saturday Night Live and ripped a picture of the Pope at the end of her song, and it was all anyone could talk about at school the next day. She was universally condemned by the elders who surrounded me, but even back then I had questions about her motives. And once I learned that she had spent time in a Magdalene laundry, suddenly, it all made sense.

This book is everything I look for in fiction. It sent me down a path, Googling everything I could find about the laundries. I watched one documentary, Sex in a Cold Climate, and bookmarked another for when I get time, The Forgotten Maggies. I read article after article after article after article, tearing up, shaking with unabashed fury at the injustice of it all, at a Church so quick to condemn women simply for the sake of being female, and at the utterly complicit society who bought into it all. For a work of fiction to do that, to give voice to so many who were silenced for far too long, that’s a powerful thing, and this is absolutely a book that needed to be written.

V.S. Alexander is a pen name of author Michael Meeske; you can visit his webpage here and follow him on Twitter here.