"This is the story of a woman who had a barrage of issues to contend with and shows the resilience she needed to defeat them and emerge a confident, healed individual."
This is the story of a woman who had a barrage of issues to contend with and shows the resilience she needed to defeat them and emerge a confident, healed individual. 'What I do know is no parents are perfect' she writes in her final letter to her father. Even as a young girl she is well aware that hers are not. Her father is a feckless alcoholic drifter, who is allegedly off on business trips for long stretches of time. She loves him but is wary and later learns that he is having affairs with many women. He also drags them round the world to different locations.Her mother does not have the strength to leave him. raising the children and being a loved presence for her daughter, although not offering the strength she needs as a young girl. Haunted by nightmares, the writer is sure that her father had abused her at night and, bit by bit, we learn that he has consistently done so, even taking his daughter outside to photograph her. For comfort, she flees to the orange groves where she feels safe and cosseted 'This is what heaven must smell like' Nature offers her succour and is vividly real to her but her friends think she is plain strange when she worries about the trees hurting when they are cut and the sap runs out of them. Nature is where life is clean and she can escape the scary world of these adults who are failing her ' I stroke towards sunbeams and catch them - touch the purifying light' She cleanses herself by writing down her worries and letting the words be rinsed away in rivers and under the shower. She marries and confides in her husband, only to be hit with tragedy as her son has a life threatening brain tumour. She needs to grow up fast and we have watched her burgeoning womanhood and teaching herself about life and it's struggles. She shows strength and resilience and she finally confronts her dad, once her mum has found the strength to leave him and just before he fails with dementia. He tells her that her very strength was what made him want to break her. The book is evidence that he did not succeed.
Carina Barnett, A LoveReading Ambassador
| Primary Genre | Biographies & Autobiographies |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
