A Southerner by heritage and by inclination, author Marie Etienne shares the story of her fractured family, a story filled with vivid scenes of an unfoegettably cruel mother and her family"s struggle to survive each other and their grim world. With unflinching humor and honesty, Etienne paints a powerful picture of her wealthy, Southern family--a mother, who bounces from sobriety to drunkenness, kindness to vicious cruelty, and a father who tried to protect his sons from death and his daughters from danger. Murder, insanity, suicide, and alcoholism overshadow Mardi Gras balls, family fishing trips, and daughter"s cotillions. Rising stakes threaten to topple Marie as she struggles to escape, yet understand, her mother"s abusive madness. Thirty years later, Marie takes readers on a harrowing trek past the point of survival, yearning for the love she knows she cannot get from her mother or her husband, but can only hope to give to her own children.