Believed to be the story that inspired John Grisham's "A Time to Kill"; This fictionalized autobiography is centered around a true life rape victim's story heard in a Mississippi court room. However, unlike the novel where the girl is wrapped in the loving arms of her family and her honor is defended by her father, the real little girl was handed back to the very perpetrators of the crime committed against her. While the novel, published in 1987 is believed to have exploited her story for it's sensational appeal and went on to become a movie, millions of fans were entertained and dollars made. Meanwhile a child struggled to grow up in an environment of horrendous abuse, isolation and psychological manipulation. This is her story as she remembers it. Written as a fictionalized narrative changing names and some circumstances in order to protect the innocent, this book explores the psychological mechanisms of disassociation and memory repression and delves deeply into the family dynamics when incest, abuse and betrayal replace the love and security that childhood is supposed to offer. This is also the story of a young woman's journey from the devastating effects of a life lived in the shadows of her own partially repressed memories into the light of reality where she learned to accept herself and love the world around her. Survival is what we all did when we made it through the abuse. Living is what we do when we realize that the abuse was never about us and we are not to blame.

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