COMING 2026

My memoir presents a true and timely representation of the impacts of terrifying mental, physical and emotional abuse. My own story of neglect and exploitation by men in power exposes a wider crisis where accountability has failed and vulnerable children are victims. This book emerges now to expose harms, honor survivors and demand accountability.

My story begins with my mother sitting on the edge of the bed, the one with the purple bedspread, reading our favorite story, Are You My Mother? She finishes the book, sets it aside, walks out of the house, and disappears. We were three kids under three and I was the middle child. 

Shortly after my mother’s disappearance, I was separated from my siblings and left in the terrifying care of a sexually abusive uncle in Montana. This nightmare was punctuated by the erratic appearances of my father as he reinvented himself, taking my siblings and me on a chaotic ride through a series of emotionally-unavailable "mothers," and illegal careers, only to return me to my uncle every time his life took a turn in another direction. My father started dealing drugs with strangers who came and went, and wanting to raise our consciousness, he started smoking pot with us when I was six years old. 

After what dad called his “Awakening,” we were confronted with other trials, from unsafe environments to peeping toms and naked-hippie gatherings. We were kept out of public schools which he called Shame Institutes. By the time I was 10, my siblings and I were supporting his cottage industry by tying macrame hangers and helping make sand candles. 

Dad was always trying new food fads, so we were put on a diet of mugwort tea and brown rice to rid our body of worms. There was a Winchell’s donut house just up the alley, thankfully, where we befriended the workers and ate free donuts by the dozen. I robbed that donut house before I left home one spring. 

At 13, navigating a maze of confusion, distrust and fear, I devised a plan to run away and escape my fathers house, leaving my siblings, my only anchors, behind. I found myself ensnared in survival-based sexual relationships with men more than twice my age, desperate to find security in a world that felt relentlessly hostile. With only five years of education between elementary and middle school, I faced improbable odds. 

Along the way, figures like Uncle Ernie, Little Earl, Misty, Stomper, Scat, Cedric and Leroy Jones, became both mentors and predators. Often homeless, sleeping in laundry rooms, church pews and bathroom stalls, I was drawn into escort services, con games, robberies and acts of violence. 

Through the treacherous landscape of my teens, I encountered a presence; startling, intimate and sacred, that proved to be a compass. And at nineteen, a transformative encounter with my father within a Native American sweat lodge became a moment for healing, changing the trajectory of my life. 

Broken Family invites readers into a shared chamber of humanity and stands as a celebration of survival. It casts a light on intergenerational trauma, the hidden struggles of children from fractured families and what I understand as our collective memory’s wider wound. My book brings into focus the transformative power of compassion and courage and it explores themes similar to the works of Educated, by Tara Westover, The Glass Castle, by Jeanette Walls, and What My Bones Know, by Stephanie Loo. 

My 387 page memoir chronicles my journey from age two to nineteen and my hope is that it contributes meaningfully to the literary landscape by helping readers to understand the epidemic of predatory child abuse, and intergenerational trauma. For those readers who are victims themselves, my hope is that my story can inspire healing and resilience. 

I am currently crafting the sequel, tentatively titled Guardians Rising; A Family's Journey to Protect the Planet.