Terror In An American Family

Terror in an American Family is the story of how a little girl named Sis attempts to rationalize the irrationality of physical, psychological, and emotional abuse in her family. Gradually, Sis becomes aware of violence in her home as she watches her career military father mistreat his wife and children. She is continually haunted by the “why” of her father’s cruelty, and swept up by the paralyzing fear of it.
Natural compassion for her mother, her ten siblings, and even her father, and her desire to be loved, cause intense suffering that wound her soul. Sis’ struggle to understand her father, and the dubious practicality of love and forgiveness, take her on a journey of pain, low self-esteem, and unimaginable terror. Consistent cruelty–both emotional and physical–rule her life and the lives of her family as they move all over America. Neither Sis’ mother, nor she, nor her sisters and brothers realize that they are trapped by generations of domestic abuse.
Fearing that her mother could be killed at any time and that she and her siblings might be left with her father to be tortured in mind and body, Sis constantly appeals to both Heaven and earth for help. But Heaven is silent, and the world of the 1950s and 1960s is oblivious to their plight.
It was Post WWII; the Cold War era, and her US Air Force father and his family were transferred all across America: by the time Sis was fifteen, they had moved fifteen times. Each place they lived held its own terror, including the last move to Texas, the place of Sis’ birth.
Finally, as an adult, she is forced to either foster peace or confront the subject of her nightmares–her father.