The Long Escape


Jeff Noonan - 2012
    It tells of how a boy and his family lived a life of hellish abuse, fought back, and learned to live with the memories. It is also an adventure tale, following the boy through the military buildup to the Viet Nam War, Pacific Island love affairs, and his personal battles in the Montana mountains.As a boy, Jeff was raised in the mountains of Montana where he idolized his father, a former professional boxer. But in the early 1950s, his idol became an alcoholic and an abuser, repeatedly beating Jeff, his mother, and his younger siblings. In desperation, Jeff resorted to digging hidden bunkers where the family could hide when they were attacked. Life became a daily struggle, both physically and financially.He left school and worked wherever he could find a job, using the money to help feed his family. He labored in lumber mills, railroads, and ranches until he joined the military at age seventeen.This story follows the boy from the hell of his childhood through Pacific Island love affairs, killer typhoons, and Hong Kong bar battles as he fights his way to acceptance in the rough and tumble world of a destroyer sailor. In his first Navy assignment, he finds that his poor education has resulted in a job he despises; working as a permanent head cleaner on an old destroyer. But through perseverance, hard work, and an iron will, he becomes a leader, supervising teams working on experimental shipboard missile guidance systems.But you can’t run from yourself. Jeff’s family problems haunt him, frequently bringing him back to Montana; to increasingly violent confrontations with his father. Tensions build until the inevitable happens and Jeff is drawn into a final, epic, battle with the abuser.A sobering, visceral, and shockingly real portrait of domestic violence, the boy’s relentless drive for survival is nothing short of extraordinary. An uplifting journey to redemption and self-acceptance, The Long Escape sends an unforgettable message to the abused that there really can be hope and love in their future. It also brilliantly captures the sometimes hollow feeling of victory and the scars of abuse that are carried for a lifetime.This is a true story. Some names have been changed to accomodate participants, but the story is absolutely true. The author sincerely hopes that, by publishing this memoir, he can provide a bit of a roadmap for others struggling to escape a life of abuse.

The Water and the Wine


Tamar Hodes - 2018
    Leonard Cohen is at the start of his career and in love with Marianne, who is also muse to her ex-husband, Axel. Australian authors George Johnston and Charmian Clift write, drink and fight. It is a hedonistic time of love, sex and new ideas. As the island hums with excitement, Jack and Frieda Silver join the community, hoping to mend their broken marriage. However, Greece is overtaken by a military junta and the artistic idyll is threatened.

Rising Road: A True Tale of Love, Race, and Religion in America


Sharon Davies - 2009
    On August 11, 1921, in Birmingham, Alabama, a Methodist minister named Edwin Stephenson shot and killed a Catholic priest, James Coyle, in broad daylight and in front of numerous witnesses. The killer's motive? The priest had marriedStephenson's eighteen-year-old daughter Ruth to Pedro Gussman, a Puerto Rican migrant and practicing Catholic.Sharon Davies's Rising Road resurrects the murder of Father Coyle and the trial of his killer. As Davies reveals with novelistic richness, Stephenson's crime laid bare the most potent bigotries of the age: a hatred not only of blacks, but of Catholics and foreigners as well. In one of the case'smost unexpected turns, the minister hired future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black to lead his defense. Though regarded later in life as a civil rights champion, in 1921 Black was just months away from donning the robes of the Ku Klux Klan, the secret order that financed Stephenson's defense.Entering a plea of temporary insanity, Black defended the minister on claims that the Catholics had robbed Ruth away from her true Protestant faith, and that her Puerto Rican husband was actually black.Placing the story in social and historical context, Davies brings this heinous crime and its aftermath back to life, in a brilliant and engrossing examination of the wages of prejudice and a trial that shook the nation at the height of Jim Crow.Davies takes us deep into the dark heart of the Jim Crow South, where she uncovers a searing story of love, faith, bigotry and violence. Rising Road is a history so powerful, so compelling it stays with you long after you've finished its final page.--Kevin Boyle, author of the National Book Award-winning Arc of JusticeThis gripping history...has all the makings of a Hollywood movie. Drama aside, Rising Road also happens to be a fine work of history. --History News Network

Shannon: Betrayed from Birth


Rose Martin - 2009
    The 999 call made by her mother, Karen, alerted the police to the nine-year-old's disappearance and sparked a massive search across the north of England. The story dominated newspaper headlines and television news for the weeks that followed and there was even an offer of a GBP 50,000 reward for the person who found Shannon. Twenty-four days later, Shannon was found, concealed in the base of a divan bed in a flat about a mile away from her home in West Yorkshire. The truth that unfolded over the subsequent weeks horrified the public, who had sympathized with the seemingly stricken mother and even helped in the search for Shannon. It transpired that the abduction of the innocent girl had been a wicked plan dreamed up by her own mother in league with an accomplice, her stepfather's uncle, Michael Donovan. Donovan lured Shannon into his car with the promise of a trip to the fair. For almost three weeks, she was kept hidden in his home and given temazepam and travel sickness tablets to subdue her. While Shannon suffered, her captors came up with a plan to release her in Dewsbury Market, and for Donovan to find her and claim the reward money. Shannon was finally discovered when neighbors told police that they had heard a child's footsteps coming from Donovan's flat.

Mummy Doesn't Love You


Alexander Sinclair - 2009
    She stopped at no lengths in her campaign to tear him to pieces both mentally and physically. In his chilling memoir, Alex describes how he received the most unnecessary and appalling treatment in mental institutions because of her actions, to the point where his mental and physical health deteriorated to a perilous state. Covering her tracks with cunning deception, his mother began by beating him repeatedly and forcing him to take a dangerous mix of amphetamines and Valium. His health already in balance, and raped by an uncle, the professionals believed his mother's lies. Mental asylums in Greece and the UK followed, as did isolation cells and ECT. But his mother's hatred was to take a more sinister turn still - how much more could Alex take and still survive? Not since Sickened has there been a book that catalogues a child's experience of being made devastatingly ill at the hands of their mother. Dramatic and uniquely shocking, this is a memoir that will haunt the reader long after they close the final page.

The Picture Predator: The True Story of One Mans Brutal Campaign of Terror


Robert Brown - 2020
    

Bullied Boy


Daring Diane - 2018
    Self-image, body changes, and social changes chip away at individual’s self-confidence. Withdrawal and hiding can often seem like the easiest escape. You cannot escape from life. An excellent student, our hero is ripped from his friends and everything he knows when his father is moved across the country for his job. Intent on re-establishing the mother’s employment, the parents appear to withdraw from their high school student as he is dropped into a situation where he knows no one. Everyone experiences physical and emotional problems but our protagonist is ashamed of his body and won’t even talk to his parents who seem oblivious. Wearing baggy clothes, coats and hoods, it is easy to hide his body and isolate himself since he knows no one. Others assume he is overweight, shy or has acne problems. The strangely dressed student is a magnet for bullies and everyone else ignores him. Teachers might have gotten involved or pushed him to participate in class, but as an excellent student, grades are not an issue. Life evolves into a strategy to be left alone and survive another day. Because of this, attacks are not reported. An accident at school will expose our protagonist’s secrets to a classmate. How that classmate responds will change our protagonist’s life. There are still bullying and attacks, but with newfound confidence, our hero will deal with things differently. Can this quiet, isolated person evolve into an example and build real friendships while accepting life’s little hurdles? This series of books contain examples of high school life that help the reader to identify and deal with bullying behavior in a high school setting. The books in this series are intended to be safe reading for teens and tweens. Thank you for reading on Daring Diane Disclaimer This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Old Maine Woman: Stories from the Coast to the County


Glenna Johnson Smith - 2010
    The book also includes some of her best fiction pieces.

Frankie


Kevin Lewis - 1973
    She tries to build a new life, but you can only stay anonymous when no one wants to find you. Hunted by both the police and shadowy assailants with powerful connections, the odds are stacked against a woman who will do whatever it takes to protect herself - and those who mean most to her ...

The Beast: A Chilling True Story of a Psychopathic Child Killer (Ryan Green's True Crime)


Ryan Green - 2021
    He kidnapped, raped and killed six children and teenagers in a single month. While the previous missing children had been treated like runaways, there was now no question that somebody was abducting children in the Lower Mainland area, and the media went berserk.The police immediately came under scrutiny for failing to connect the previous disappearances. The missing person cases were passed to homicide detectives, and a whole new investigation began. The police were now hunting a serial killer and Clifford Olson Junior was one of the main suspects.From the age of seventeen, Clifford Olson Junior spent only 1,501 days outside of prison or jail. If his claims are to be believed, he averaged about one murder every ten days. During his imprisonment, he was assessed on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, a tool designed to evaluate psychopathy. The standard threshold is 25-30. He scored a 38 out of 40, the highest rating ever recorded.The Beast is a chilling account of Clifford Olson Junior and one of the most disturbing true crime stories in Canada’s history. Ryan Green’s riveting narrative draws the reader into the real-live horror experienced by the victims and has all the elements of a classic thriller.CAUTION: This book contains descriptive accounts of torture, abuse and violence. If you are especially sensitive to this material, it might be advisable not to read any further.

The Jade Rabbit


Mark Matthews - 2011
    She is adopted and raised in the United States where she becomes a social worker in order to help children in a desolate Detroit neighborhood. Her nickname is The Jade Rabbit and this is her story.As director of a shelter for runaway and neglected youth, Janice Zhu Woodward gets pulled into the lives of the lost children of the Detroit streets. Fueled by angry parents, stories of ghosts who haunt the shelter's basement, and her own history of being left by a birth-mother who may have long forgotten her, Janice emulates her adoptive mother and becomes an avid, nearly obsessed marathoner. Training injuries, failed goals, and unexpected trauma test her will and take her near her breaking point. When a mysterious girl with dreadlocks is abandoned at the shelter's front door, Janice becomes her surrogate mother and risks everything to save her. Only a miraculous, unforgettable run through the streets of Detroit can save them both.

An Inconvenient Year


Yvonne Joye - 2012
    It is a story of coping with uncertainty, the reactions of others and living with them too. It documents the total shock and utter fear that a diagnosis brings and the hopelessness of surrendering to a treatment that brings its own baggage yet ultimately insures life. It talks about confronting hair loss along with discovering the more covert assault on all things feminine. Yet at the very root of the book, ahead of the fear and anger, there is humour and laughter. Though the story of cancer has been told before, it has not been told like this"

Forgetting Zoë


Ray Robinson - 2010
    Even the arrest of a suspect and Ingrid's newly established relationship with Zoë's father isn't enough to stop the nightmare from which there is no wakingEnslaved in her underground tomb, deprived of food and light and water, the girl Zoe once was steadily begins to disappear. Allowed to see and hear only what Thurman permits, she lives in a world that is all about his needs and wants being met...But over time Thurman will grow tired of the rapidly maturing Zoë. And when he decides it is time to get rid of her, Zoë must finally make her bid for freedom.Forgetting Zoë is a moving, epic tale of courage, survival, horror and loss, that explores how a bond of affection and intimacy can develop between captive and captor.

Secret Life: The Jian Ghomeshi Investigation


Kevin Donovan - 2016
    Whispers at dinner parties. Warnings about bad dates with a Canadian celebrity. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, superstar CBC broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi revealed his interest in “rough sex” in a long Facebook post, and a scandal of unprecedented scale descended on the radio host.What the public did not know was that months before Ghomeshi’s emotional post, Canadaland podcaster Jesse Brown and Toronto Star journalist Kevin Donovan were quietly pursuing serious allegations against him. In Secret Life, Donovan takes us inside the Star’s investigation. Step by step, he explores the story as only he can: the media frenzy, his own personal and professional doubts, the women who came forward with stories about an alleged dark side of a national idol, and Ghomeshi’s ignominious firing and dramatic criminal trial. Taking us behind the scenes, Donovan sheds light on the journalistic process and the complexity of gathering information about a highly sensitive matter from named and confidential sources, including those women who feared it was their word against a beloved public figure’s.Secret Life is a thought-provoking account of the landmark Ghomeshi exposé that sparked a nation-wide discussion on sexual assault, the cult of celebrity, and the politics of power and gender in the workplace.

Switching Time: A Doctor's Harrowing Story of Treating a Woman with 17 Personalities


Richard Baer - 2007
    Odder still, she reveals that she’s suffering from a persistent memory problem. Routinely, she “loses” parts of her day, finding herself in places she doesn’t remember going to or being told about conversations she doesn’t remember having. Her problems are so pervasive that she often feels like an impersonator in her own life; she doesn’t recognize the people who call themselves her friends, and she can’t even remember being intimate with her own husband. Baer recognizes that Karen is on the verge of suicide and, while trying various medications to keep her alive, attempts to discover the root cause of her strange complaints. It’s the work of months, and then years, to gain Karen’s trust and learn the true extent of the trauma buried in her past. What she eventually reveals is nearly beyond belief, a narrative of a childhood spent grappling with unimaginable horror. How has Karen survived with even a tenuous grasp on sanity?Then Baer receives an envelope in the mail. It’s marked with Karen’s return address but contains a letter from a little girl who writes that she’s seven years old and lives inside of Karen. Soon Baer receives letters from others claiming to be parts of Karen. Under hypnosis, these alternate Karen personalities reveal themselves in shocking variety and with undeniable traits—both physical and psychological. One “alter” is a young boy filled with frightening aggression; another an adult male who considers himself Karen’s protector; and a third a sassy flirt who seeks dominance over the others. It’s only by compartmentalizing her pain, guilt, and fear in this fashion—by “switching time” with alternate selves as the situation warrants—that Karen has been able to function since childhood.Realizing that his patient represents an extreme case of multiple personality disorder, Baer faces the daunting task of creating a therapy that will make Karen whole again. Somehow, in fact, he must gain the trust of each of Karen’s seventeen “alters” and convince them of the necessity of their own annihilation.As powerful as Sybil or The Three Faces of Eve, Switching Time is the first complete account of such therapy to be told from the perspective of the treating physician, a stunningly devoted healer who worked selflessly for decades so that Karen could one day live as a single human being.From the Hardcover edition.