“A moment arrives when the usefulness of a secret expires. Keeping it becomes the thing that hurts us. We have to tell. “

This heartfelt memoir takes us to the darkest place, and back again, as we meet Amy, and her “perfect life” in Amarillo, Texas, and then are told her story — horrifying with a secret which hasn’t been told in the thirty-odd years since it happened.

Written with candor, and the deepest intimacy, it would be impossible not to be touched (and appalled) by Amy’s experiences, and awed by the healing process she followed, beginning with the telling and the sharing, with the reader, and with tremendous bravery.

I read this book almost straight through, unable to contain the emotions raised (within this reader, and no doubt, even more primally for the author), including sadness, rage, terror, and eventually, a baseline of healing and acceptance. For life does go on, ultimately and regardless. Terrible things happen to many, if not all of us, and as the author shows us, we become the people we are by how we are able to respond, and carry on, growing in a direction that contains us, even when things appear unfathomable. As the reader comes to terms with her own life and priorities of focus, it feels as if we have taken a journey together, and come out in the end a little wiser, our empathy heightened, and feeling a whole lot more vigilant.

A difficult read and an inspiring one, we are all ultimately connected by our compassion to our own, and other’s, often indescribable pain. And sometimes, that is a reminder we all need to hold, front and center, as we find our way to each other and through the best and the worst, as they inevitably touch our lives.

A great big thank you to the author, Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.