Girl Unbroken by Regina Calcaterra - TLC Book Tour

Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (October 18, 2016)

In the highly anticipated sequel to her New York Times bestseller Etched in Sand, Regina Calcaterra pairs with her youngest sister Rosie to tell Rosie’s harrowing, yet ultimately triumphant, story of childhood abuse and survival.

They were five kids with five different fathers and an alcoholic mother who left them to fend for themselves for weeks at a time. Yet through it all they had each other. Rosie, the youngest, is fawned over and shielded by her older sister, Regina. Their mother, Cookie, blows in and out of their lives “like a hurricane, blind and uncaring to everything in her path.”

But when Regina discloses the truth about her abusive mother to her social worker, she is separated from her younger siblings Norman and Rosie. And as Rosie discovers after Cookie kidnaps her from foster care, the one thing worse than being abandoned by her mother is living in Cookie’s presence. Beaten physically, abused emotionally, and forced to labor at the farm where Cookie settles in Idaho, Rosie refuses to give in. Like her sister Regina, Rosie has an unfathomable strength in the face of unimaginable hardship—enough to propel her out of Idaho and out of a nightmare.

Filled with maturity and grace, Rosie’s memoir continues the compelling story begun in Etched in Sand—a shocking yet profoundly moving testament to sisterhood and indomitable courage.

 About the author



Regina Calcaterra, Esq. is the bestselling author of Etched in Sand: A True Story of Five Siblings Who Survived an Unspeakable Childhood on Long Island, which has been integrated into academic curriculums nationwide. She is a partner at Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz and is a passionate advocate for children in foster care.

Find out more about Regina at her website, connect with her on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter.

 

 My thoughts

Fve siblings, an alcoholic mother, five different fathers, and a life filled with sadness, regret, dark moments and grief.

This book was a bit hard to get through, not because it's not well written, but because it IS.  Let me explain what I mean.  I've often thought that the best stories are those which tend to put us right in the middle, the ones where we are reading and it's as if we become one of the characters, seeing what they're seeing and feeling what they're feeling.  Hence the hard part about this book.  

We follow the story of the five siblings and their survival through weeks of being left to fend for themselves by their mother.  When one of the girls decides to break the silence and tell her social worker what is going on, the children are removed and separated, and there begins some of the hardest moments these siblings will have to endure.

Rosie and one of her siblings, a brother, manage to stay together but at a very huge price.  As they are placed in a foster home and made to suffer yet more torment and abuse.

At one point, their biological mother kidnaps the two youngest and flees to Idaho.

The story takes twists and turns, as we become aware of the abuse these children are suffering, the good for nothing mother they were born to, and the men who are in and out of her life, some pretending not to see the abuse, while others adding to it with their own torment.

Brilliantly told story, but make sure you have the stomach for it, it's quite emotional to read.