Families may be held together by many things — love, need and millions of tiny, invisible threads. But when you add fear and secrets into that mix, the heart of that family will blacken and harden, creating turmoil in the inner lives of its members, and turning their physical lives into mere subsistence. When Becky's young and idealistically romantic mother Mina met Bruce, he seemed like nothing less than the fairest, strongest, most handsome catch of her generation, and they soon married. In the sultry heat of South Africa, a country whose society was soon to splinter irreparably under apartheid, their family increased rapidly, as did Mina's fears that her young husband's erratic volatility might escalate into something worse. The decades to follow were to be more painful than the unfortunate woman ever imagined — a veritable blur of abuse; of her, of her children — of their lives. This is a harrowing memoir, yet it beautifully demonstrates how great the capacity for hope can be in human beings, likewise empathy, friendship and, ultimately, forgiveness.
