As the sisters begin to knit their lives back together, Lane’s writing evolves as well, fusing their horrific memories of abuse and domestic violence into an anthem of healing. Those accounts are difficult to read, as the individual stories spill over with pain: at least one sister was sexually abused by a priest in an orphanage, and Lane’s own foster family was fraught with abuse. “Leonarda had given Kay and me to Bernard to appease his anger,” she writes, “[and] Bernard was an angry, powerful, and mean god. It took a lot of sacrifices to satisfy him.”
Lane recounts how each sister transformed their pain into strength, detailing her own efforts to commit her experiences to paper and her urgency to reveal the truth of the siblings’ varied circumstances. Her ability to process such trauma is striking, as is her determination to bring her long-fractured family peace; she credits God with that resilience and encourages others to believe they, too, can be delivered from the pain of their past. Readers will feel the despair and ultimate hope alongside Lane and her sisters, crafted through beautifully resolute prose, as these 11 abused children manage to transcend their nightmarish pasts and rediscover life’s meaning.
Takeaway: Faith-filled account of a journey from abuse to hope.
Comparable Titles: Daniella DeChristopher’s Behind Closed Doors, Scarlett Jones’s Just A Girl.
Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A