Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)"Instead of being so amiable and demure on our first date, I should have taken a gun with me and shot him." Now there's a hook that pulls you in. The author is writing about her future husband.
"Susan married Frank Perez and began twenty years of chaos and uncertainty with the unstable man. After two children, a nasty divorce and reconciliation, she agrees to move to Arizona to find peace in desert living. She cannot begin to foresee the nightmare they will soon be living."
This is a true story from a lady who's been there. A lady with an excellent command of the language. A lady who can write. A lady with a wonderfully understated style that leaves nothing out but which makes you think instead of preaching to you. Every victim has his or her own story. A story which only he or she can tell. Be grateful that Susan Shelley has shared her story with us.
Susan and Nancy are fraternal twins who were adopted. Nancy dated Frank once and decided he was a bit too domineering for her tastes. But Nancy thought he would be a good match for Susan. The rest is an ugly history. Even from the first chapters, hindsight tells us that the signs were all there. But without the benefit of hindsight, would you have known?
Susan was a good young girl, raised in a strongly Christian home, with a beautiful and naive heart. She just didn't know what to expect of a marriage. She didn't know that such dominance is abnormal.
Frank Joseph Perez's family is from Spain and Puerto Rico. His grandmother was born in the Canary Islands. This does not matter to Susan's domineering mother. As far as she's concerned, they're all Mexican trash. She has plenty of other ammunition in her arsenal besides blatant racism. Frank smokes, and he loves guns and hunting.
Just to get out of that environment, Susan made the tragic mistake of marrying Frank. They changed the planned June wedding to a Las Vegas elopement on New Years Day, 1968. Frank tells of his first wife, who his father forced him to marry because he got her pregnant. They were both teenagers, too young, and it didn't work out. Frank blames his father, not himself, for that mess. Remember what I said about hindsight?
Part of what makes this book so special is that it's about life. It's not a simple story of a good woman and a bad man. He, too, is a victim, and the reader feels his pain. I know this was hard for the author to write. It's the first book in a three-part series. It works quite well as a stand-alone novel, and it also makes me anxious to read the next book.
Don't start reading it unless you have time to finish it. Not before bed, not on the bus to work. You won't be able to stop yourself from turning the pages.
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