Kaethe

This is the most suspenceful and the most terrifying book I will read all year. I thought I was going to read a book about how a kid with no education managed to acquire one, and there is some of that. But mostly this is a book about an ongoing true crime, even if no one ever frames it that way.

Well, okay, one of the horrible things about it isn't criminal in most states: parents may legally withhold education from their children for any reason or none. In NC, for example, a parent is required to establish a formal homeschool, with a curriculum, and annual standardized tests, but no one ever checks and there is no penalty. Nor does it seem to be a crime to use your children as slave labor. Depriving your child of life-saving vaccinations does not make you criminally negligent, either.

Here's horror: you find the courage to point out to your parents that they let your brother terrorize you for years, and then they try and gaslight you, shame you, kick you out of the family, and tell everyone you're a crazy liar.

Given the overall rearing of these kids, the recklessness, the consistent failure to care about them as people in any way, it isn't surprising that the parents would ignore serious violence being done. Nor am I surprised that they would never once see the horrible cruelty of forcing, what, four out of six children to endure torture and suffer quietly and alone.

The whole thing is terrifying from end to end. I'm glad that several of the kids made it out. My heart bleeds for the ones who didn't get out and for all the violence that could have been prevented, and for the ongoing psychic violence of having to pretend that nothing is wrong. And for the victims still to come. What level of violence is enough for someone to do something? When does the violence cease to be "domestic" and become "mass killing"?

Library copy