Book excerpt: A blistering story of surviving, and overcoming, the worst kinds of abuse: physical, emotional, sexual. Shirley Turner tells her own story, from a squalid childhood in Maine, to a forced marriage and motherhood, constantly moving from place to place with her controlling husband. Ironically, it is becoming a mother that brings her greatest happiness, and also her greatest tragedy. This is a journey of triumph, a story that exalts the incredible courage of one human being who refused to buckle under a barrage of despair, hatred, and trauma, inspired by the one pure love of her life.