Author: Torres, Julia Angela.
Publisher: Bookbaby
Pages:192
At nine years old, Julia survives a harrowing abduction and sexual assault on the streets of New York City. Terrified and traumatized, she runs home, expecting safety-only to be met with indifference and a shocking realization: the adults she depends on are as dangerous as the stranger who attacked her. Trapped in a home where speaking the truth is perilous, Julia resorts to living in a constant state of hyper-vigilance - the only way she finds she can cope and survive. Forced into an unwanted adoption by a narcissistic, pill-popping Jewish stepfather and a mother determined to eradicate her daughter's true Puerto Rican heritage, Julia struggles to make sense of her identity in a volatile household marked by religious, cultural, physical and emotional discord. By the age of fourteen, Julia is suffocating under the weight of her family's secrets, betrayal and the terror of her parents' alcoholism, as they become entangled in a child molestation case within the family.