Kin

by Shawna Kay Rodenberg

A heart stopping memoir of a wrenching Appalachian girlhood and a multilayered portrait of a misrepresented people, from Rona Jaffe Writer's Award winner Shawna Kay Rodenberg.

When Shawna Kay Rodenberg was four, her father, fresh from a ruinous tour in Vietnam, spirited her family from their home in the hills of Eastern Kentucky to Minnesota, renouncing all of their earthly possessions to live in the Body, an off-the-grid End Times religious community. Her father was seeking a better, safer life for his family, but the austere communal living of prayer, bible study and strict regimentation was a bad fit for the precocious Shawna. Disciplined harshly for her many infractions, she was sexually abused by a predatory adult member of the community. Soon after the leader of the Body died and revelations of the sexual abuse came to light, her family returned to the same Kentucky mountains that their ancestors have called home for three hundred years. It is a community ravaged by the coal industry, but for all that, rich in humanity, beauty, and the complex knots of family love. Curious, resourceful, rebellious, Shawna ultimately leaves her mountain home but only as she masters a perilous balancing act between who she has been and who she will become.

Kin is a mesmerizing memoir of survival that seeks to understand and make peace with the people and places that were survived. It is above all about family-about the forgiveness and love within its bounds-and generations of Appalachians who have endured, harmed, and held each other through countless lifetimes of personal and regional tragedy.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Cults, Religion, Coming Of Age, Biography

352 pages, Hardcover

First published June 8, 2021

Reviews

[emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

i am physically incapable of saying no to a memoir.

but maybe i should start trying.

this was choppy! it was weird! i found myself confused and discombobulated, and i'm not just saying that because i love the word discombobulated!

although that is part of it. discombobulated discombobulated discombobulated.

i love memoirs because i feel like they are The Peak, in many ways, of why i love reading - to learn, to experience other lives, to feel.

but this felt like it kept me at arm's length throughout.

bottom line: discombobulated!

(thanks to the publisher for the copy)

[Theresa Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This memoir has its moments, but it’s strangely lacking a point of view. Rodenberg spends much of the time talking about growing up a part of The Body, a strict religion in which her family had to sell everything and live in poverty. Girls were required to wear dresses and be subservient to men. Rodenberg at times seems to think this sort of inequity might be a bad thing, but it also sounds like this role of femininity largely works for her even after she ultimately gets educated. Toward the end she mentions that she bounced in and around many religions, always feeling a little better when she was leaning in toward some sort of spiritual practice. She both has anger toward the more sophisticated city folk she encountered in her youth who made her feel inferior while she also reinforces some stereotypes of growing up in Appalachia with her own story of constant physical abuse from her father. As part of his verbal abuse, he’d accuse her of using drugs and having an interest in sex, and then she would smoke weed and engage in sex in less than loving committed relationships.

The narrative bounces around in time from letters her father sent while fighting in Viet Nam, her mother’s perspective on getting married at 17, and the author’s story of growing up in a family where she fully expected to get beaten with a belt that would leave permanent scars, but she apparently has no anger about that. Thus, the book reads like a homework assignment from a therapist—it’s great that Rodenberg had the opportunity to work through the ugly elements of her life story, but it doesn’t make for a particularly compelling narrative.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this memoir, which RELEASES JUNE 8, 2021.

[Paulette Livers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Raymond Carver said he never talked down to his characters, because they were his people. Rodenberg manages the difficult task of treating her characters with dignity and respect, while infusing her narrative with the deepest and best sort of humor. I've been waiting for this book for a long time, and hope it gets the recognition it deserves for examining a distinct American culture in a way that 'Hillbilly Elegy' failed to do.

[Brooke || FindingMyFavoriteBook · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this copy from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

A family portrayal of emotional and physical abuse in the backdrop of a religious cult. Although told from the perspective of the woman who lived it, the stories seemed somewhat random and I couldn’t connect with the characters. I had hoped for another book like Educated or The Sound of Gravel and, unfortunately, this one fell flat.

[Madeline Rodenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a beautiful portrayal of the struggle to find oneself in a world that thinks it already knows who you are. Shawna Rodenberg is not just a survivor, she’s a fighter and a rebel, and she rebels by loving a universe that isn’t always kind.

[Jenn Adams · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to love this book. I love a good memoir, especially one that includes religious cults. The story was there, but I think the author had difficulty putting it into a cohesive tale that flowed effortlessly for the reader. I loved hearing about Shawna’s experience, but Shorty’s endless Vietnam letters I could’ve done without. I also wanted to know how Shawna’s experience in The Body and eastern KY helped her survive life in Virginia and as a married adult and mother. Again, the story is there but the execution was lacking for me.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think that if I had read this BEFORE "Educated," I might've enjoyed this more. I also struggled to keep track of all of the Kentucky/Appalachian kin during those chapters.

[Maureen Grigsby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some people have very hard lives!

[Eileen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I honestly wanted to like this one more, but the writing and editing were pretty uneven and I often had to flip back to figure out whose story I was reading and when. Her writing style was also uneven, although I think a good editor could have made a lot of that better. Regardless, I persevered because I wanted to try understanding her and her family a lot better. The author was raised mainly in two places--off-the-grid Minnesota in a religious commune known as The Body and in the Appalachian Mountains of Eastern Kentucky where both her parents and grandparents were raised, going back many generations. The timeline and point-of-view go back and forth between Shawna's past and current timeline, her parents' timelines, and it covers their childhood as well as when they met and became married. While that contributed to the occasional confusion, I thought that worked for the story she was trying to tell. But the transitions from one timeline to the other were often abrupt and I would have to go back and make sure I was finished with one character and switch over to the new character. This was not a happy story and yet, I didn't feel like Shawna was bashing her Appalachian family necessarily. I think she was more saying that her parents and their parents and so on were very limited in the opportunities they were given, and while she wonders just how different their lives might have been, she also understands that their choices were extremely limited. She talks much about her relationship with her father, which, at best, was her desire to please him. She does acknowledge that he loved her, and she loved him, but they could not live together. While you can read her story and become very upset about how he abused her, she also points out that she held some responsibility for the strife that was always between them. I don't know, though. She was a child. And until she literally marries a man she doesn't really love so she can get away from him, he never stops with the abuse/discipline. In some ways, this book reminded me of Educated by Tara Westover, especially in the author's relationship with her father. This book was sadly not as well-written as that one. I had a harder time connecting with Shawna, her parents, and her grandparents. But there were definitely passages that I became completely immersed in, which tells me that this book could be so much better with appropriate editing. I also liked what she had to say about religion in her life. Despite the extreme views of The Body, she truly loved learning about God and his place in her life and while she is now a practicing Catholic rather than a follower of The Body, she feels a strong connection to God and always feels unsettled when she spends too much time away from a church body.

I think I read an interview with the author where she says she may write another book that covers the next 20 years of her life, and I would honestly be interested in that. This book ends with her marriage to her first husband, but I would love to see how she ends up with who she is now, which she summarizes at the end of this book. I loved her second husband and would love to see how they reconnected.

Would I recommend this book? If memoirs are your thing and you'd like to read the story about a woman from the Appalachian area who experienced hardship not just in her life in that area, but also in a religious commune, this might be your thing.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Kenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I truly don't know where to begin with this one. Kin feels like going home with a camera and a mirror. Rodenberg definitely has a great combination of intimacy and distance to paint this story with painful, loving honesty.

At times, this can be a really tough read—definitely one I hand over to friends (and my nana) with a quick "heads up" for dark content. Even with that (and maybe in part because of it?), I'm not sure that there is another book on the shelves right now that explores the intersections of Appalachian identity, religious trauma, poverty, violence, and familial commitment. I also really appreciated how thoroughly this explored these issues from a woman's perspective—mothers and daughters and sisters and wives who are viewed as a reflection of the family and their morality.

Thanks, Shawna Kay, from one EKY gal to another, for putting our mountains into print with pride and honesty.

[EllenZReads · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this book.

DNF at 71 percent. I thought the premise (little girl raised in a weird religious cult and in the backwoods of Appalachia) sounded interesting. However, the scenarios were disjointed and sometimes went from one time period to another with no indication that the author had moved on from a previous experience. The inclusion of the family's history was interesting but the switching of point of view from young Shawna to her parents as children and teenagers was very hard to follow. I just found myself bored and not caring what happened to the protagonist even when the things that happened to her were scary or inappropriate.

[Francis · Rating 3 out of 5]

ARC provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Memoirs are not a genre that I read very often, but every now and then one pops up that I feel would be very interesting to dive into. Kin by Shawna Kay Rodenberg was one o those. I was especially curious about the religious group, The Body, that Shawna was a part of for most of her youth. It’s something that I’ve heard things about every now and then, but I’ve never heard someone talk about these experiences first-hand, so I was excited about that.

Overall I felt that the book was a little disappointing. It lacked a certain coherence throughout the book and felt more like the exploration of separate characters and events instead of a cohesive plot. In my opinion the story never worked towards a certain conclusion of revelation, which had me lose interest at some point.

It is certainly an interesting story, but I think it could have been told better. Someone should have picked up all the loose pieces of this memoir and made into a complete puzzle before it was published as a full book.

[Deborah Cleaves · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well written memoir with an odd hiccup or two which attempt to memorialize pivotal moments and relationships in her parents lives. In cogent and descriptive language she reveals life as viewed from her upbringing, a dysfunctional religious and cult upbringing stalked by a father who only perceived failings rather than value, and by poverty, financial and intellectual. Her intelligence is muffled by family and a deficient education that left her feeling,, and being,, unprepared for success in life. Repeatedly suffocated by a world she cannot escape, she turns toward an improvident proposal and unexpected pregnancy as if in answer to a dream. We do not see her break free, although break free she does, but we see a narrow world view through her eyes and experiences. It is moving, sorrowful portrait, unspoiled by self pity. Her dream for herself are our dreams for her. A hopeful, if melancholy, look at an Appalachian family history.

[Laura Adams · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a person who was born and raised in Letcher County, Kentucky, I found the prologue very insulting. She was condescending to the area and most of the residents while stating how protective she was of it. I almost did not read the book because of it. But I did read the book and it was o.k. I felt that the chapters told from her mom and/or dad's perspective growing up here were a little suspect. How can you have a memoir and have chapters told by other people. Did they write those chapters or did she just write it based upon stories she had heard about their childhood?? SPOILER next so... She was sexually abused at The Body but that was never discussed in any real detail in the memoir but to me was probably the basis of much of her acting out and her feelings of being "bad" that she experienced throughout the rest of the book. Parts of the book were interesting but overall, I honestly feel like she is trying to capitalize off of the fame of the book Hillbilly Elegy by writing about Eastern Kentucky and painting it with all of the same stereotypical things that is always portrayed about the area (poverty, lack of education, abuse). There is a lot of poverty and drug abuse in Eastern KY but there is so very much more that is rarely ever shown or displayed in the books, movies or articles about the region. This is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. Truly magnificent. Also, while there is poverty, there are also many that are living well. There are some amazing homes that would sell for several hundred thousand dollars in other areas. There are some of the most intelligent people that live her too. And the generousness of the area is second to none. The community here support each other both emotionally and financially when their neighbors are ill, grieving, etc. All in all, just a typical one-dimensional, slanted view book about the area and its people, including her parents.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shawna Kay Rodenberg's memoir, Kin, tells the story of her experience growing up in Appalachia, beginning with her childhood in the religious cult The Body and alternating through her grandparents' and parents' childhoods.

Reading this memoir felt a bit like coming home. As an Appalachian myself, at times, I recognized Rodenberg's experiences so acutely. Her Appalachia was not my Appalachia, but in some ways, it was. I loved her descriptions and her prose was quite beautiful at times.

This was not a book I could read quickly. But it is worth taking your time with this one. It took me until about halfway through to really sink my teeth into this memoir. I think part of it was that it took me a while to get into the rhythm of the time changes and some of the narration/character changes. This a moving memoir of what it's like to be fiercely devoted to your family no matter the difficulties. Their relationships may be difficult but family always comes first. This is a compelling story. I always devour any book on Appalachia that I can. It is so critically important to offer more voices to represent the diverse region of Appalachia. Appalachians deserve to tell their own stories beyond JD Vance. We are so much richer and more nuanced than how he portrayed us. Shawna Kay's memoir offers a much-needed additional voice at the table.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for providing me a copy of an e-arc.

[Susan Sanders · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kindle ARC from NetGalley

I had a hard time following the characters and alternating timelines. It felt more like a reciting of events than threaded together with a theme or cohesive narration. Maybe it is because I don’t know enough about where the author is now?

[Maineguide · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like many of the other “two star” reviews, I found the writing good, but overall, the book needed serious editing. There is a section of about 30 pages of family letters sent home from Vietnam that, as far as I can tell, add very little. The timeline and characters bounce around and it takes 2/3rds of book to figure out who goes with who. Still, I will give credit to author for her accomplishments and, if one is a true student of Appalachian memoir, you may enjoy. Certainly many have, just not me.

[Janisse Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read an Advanced Reading Copy, for the purpose of giving this book a blurb. It's a powerful read.

[Raquel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Growing up in an end-times religious community, Shawna Kay Rodenberg renounced her earthly possessions and spoke in tongues. She dressed modestly, in long skirts and scratchy sweaters and could not wear pants. She was whipped for the smallest infraction, such as using a marker to underline passages in her Bible.

Rodenberg details her life in her new memoir “Kin,” starting in Seco, Kentucky, the region in Appalachia where her family has roots dating back 300 years. She narrates how the coal mines wreaked havoc on the community, how her father — restless, searching, and “red-eyed and mad with fear, following his tour of duty in Vietnam” — tried to escape through religion only to be pulled back again and again, how the tragedies and heartbreaks and the sins of previous generations seemed to repeat over and over.

“Kin” is an exquisite book. It’s not just another memoir of escape from religious fanaticism or poverty, like “Educated” or, God forbid, “Hillbilly Elegy.” It’s about learning to love, understand, and accept where you come from and all its complexities. Though toward the end of the book Rodenberg — a scared 20-year-old pregnant bride — does head East, she never really leaves those Kentucky mountains, to which she will return again and again. She never abandons her faith or her family, either.

Read more plus my interview with her on my website: http://raquel-laneri.squarespace.com/...

[Stacy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had an ARC of this book from NetGalley. When you grow up in dysfunction there’s stages. When you are very young you don’t realize not everyone lives like that, when you get to school you try to be perfect so no one knows and when you get older you seek out books like this to let you know there are others out there like you.
Kin is a book about generational trauma. It’s not an overly sad book but it has moments of abuse of children. The author does a great job exploring her family history of how she got to where she is. I wondered if she had ADHD from some of her behaviors or if that was just boredom from being brilliant in a religiously stifling environment. I also thought she had sensory processing issues because of her reactions to foods and textures it was that just her response to trauma.
This was interesting. It was lacking in connection and answers in some parts- I found myself scrambling and going back in pages to see if I could figure out what was missing. But this was an interesting account of the authors life and family.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author lived in the Eastern Kentucky mountains until her father returned from Vietnam and, determined not to spend the rest of his life in the coal mines, moved the family to a Pentecostal religious community in Grand Marais, Minnesota. His religious zeal ebbed and flowed and they returned to Kentucky, where he regularly clashed with his disobedient daughter.

The attraction of their community is illuminated by the author's comments about attending a convention of fellow believers. "Mom and Dad had only one suitcase, so Misti and I packed our clothes in brown paper bags. ... None of the girls there would have dreamed of asking why I didn't have my own suitcase, and nobody felt sorry for me." Poverty, lack of opportunity, and often rage had been part of her heritage for generations.

One of the things I most appreciated is that the author has not "seen the light," renounced her family, and moved to join the New York literati. She has five kids, is an on-and-off practicing Catholic, and lives on a goat farm in southern Indiana.

I hope to read more of her work.

[Kathy Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author grew up with a lot of religion and discipline in Grand Marais, Duluth, and Eastern KY. Her dad would have been investigated for child abuse in EP, but she is ultimately forgiving. I love this excerpt on page 300. 'Ultimately, I find it impossible to be angry at him, and I have until now, been reluctant to share my story with others, because I always feel so disappointed when their first impulse is to climb atop the nearest, safest, highest horse. "I would never . . .," they often begin their defense of an imaginary self in a world they never inhabited and likely wouldn't survive. My mother talked about I-would-nevers nervously ... -- "But for the grace of god, there go I", immediately casting a counterspell against the curse of conceit.'

[Samm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stuck between 4.5 and 5 stars. I loved the authors detailed descriptions of everything. It really helped me to understand where she was coming from, despite not sharing the same experiences as the author. Although the book jumps a bit, I took it for what it was, a memoir and I enjoyed it. Couldn’t really tell you exactly why, but I did.

[Sandi Walker` · Rating 4 out of 5]

Memior about growing up in the mountains of Kentucky. Similar to Tara Westover's :Educated", it's a story of a daughter reconciling her love for and fear and fear of Vietnam vet damaged and violent father, her strange and limiting environment, her care of her sibling and relationship with her mother. Engrossing.

[Kris (My Novelesque Life)]

DNF @60%

The prologue or chapter one sucked me in, but then slowly I lost interest in the story. I was expecting something different, I think. The first bit was leading it one way but then it started to drag for 25%. I gave up when the book was due.

[Mediaman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not at all the cultlike expose that it's promoted to be, this poorly-written book is not only difficult to read because of the author's insistence on jumping back and forth in timelines that make no sense, but in the end there's nothing significant about her life that would lead this being published. It's certainly not a feminist call to action against abusive men or some type of "masterful storytelling" as the cover claims. Unless you know nothing about Appalachian people or Pentecostal Christians, there's no real reason to read this book. Otherwise it's dully normal for the time period.

The author tells the story of her childhood until her ridiculous marriage to a man she doesn't know at around age 20. You'd think from the book's summary and cover that this would be about a cultlike religious group that she's forced to become part of. Instead it's just a simplistic telling of pretty bland traditional holy roller Christians who seem spooked by the Russians and retreat into their own sect, trying to live in the world but not of the world. That quickly dissipates when her abusive father and secretly rebellious mother stop consistently practicing what they preach, and before you know it this is just another poor hick family from the hills that makes all sorts of bad decisions.

Shawna is certainly not to blame for her younger years or the torture her father put her through--but if you're looking for a lot of examples of a crazy young life you won't find them. There are 3 or 4 cases where the guy goes nuts and whips her for things she has no control over, but the writer doesn't do much with it--telling it in an unemotional tone like she's reading a recipe. Then she insists on including things like specifics about the color of her first period or what she does when they don't have enough money for pads. Was that really necessary?

What she does gloss over is her own failures and things she does have control over. From a young age she fights back, with the encouragement of a very underhanded mom. Shawna is getting naked with boys at age eight and by the time she's in high school she is attempting to seduce them.

Teenage Rodenberg rattles through more than a half dozen boys or men she has sex with, while drinking and doing some drugs. She gets her younger sister involved as well. So while the nasty father is being portrayed as the evil Christian bad guy, in truth the women in this story are the ones who fail to stand up for themselves or speak truth when necessary or do anything other than waste their abilities to improve their own lives.

Rodenberg goes to college and repeatedly fails. She sleeps around with guys, seducing them and then dropping them. She lies and steals without conscience. She gets pregnant and isn't quite sure who the man is that she slept with, so to remedy it she commits to marrying a school counselor on their first date and two months later they are wed. That's where the book ends.

There are a couple of cases of education misconduct in the book where she goes to bed with a teacher or school employee. Even female counselors and liberal professors ask her inappropriate questions at her supposedly Christian college, hinting at lesbianism. To be honest, there's very little Christian or religious about this book, with most people clinging to their own stereotypes, bad and good.

This memoir doesn't work because a stupid woman that has made all sorts of bad choices tries to paint the men as the bad guys while she fails to learn anything from her own tragic mistakes. And the fact that she won't tell us about the next 20 years of her life makes the ending not only unsatisfying but unredemptive.

What was the point of all this? To try to give light to "misrepresented people" as the book jacket says? If so it is a dismal failure. To communicate "her spiritual suffering" as Rosanne Cash says on the back cover? Wrong again. There's not enough within the 328 pages to make any real point.

Everyone thinks they have a memoir inside them, and certainly everyone has a life story they can tell, but few are worth putting into print when an author like Rodenberg is unwilling to tell deep stories, learn from her own mistakes and place her life in proper context. She should reflect more on herself instead of worrying about her kin.

[Diane Secchiaroli · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a story of survival, the struggle to find oneself, and familial abuse throughout the generations. Shawna is born in Appalachia but moves to Minnesota when her father takes the family to join a religious cult, The Body. Shawna is a rebellious child and in constant turmoil with her father who has his own demons. The whole family has demons which effect their relationships. The story is sometimes difficult to follow as each family members background is reviewed. Possibly in the final version the chapters will be more clearly designated. This was an ARC through NetGalley.

[Kristen M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This memoir reminded me at times of Educated by Tara Westover, Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance and the Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. It takes place in the eastern mountains of Kentucky in old coal mining towns and several strict religious communities in various places, namely Minnesota.

The author catalogs the physical abuse and mental anguish doled out regularly by her severely well-intentioned father (with submissive mother as witness) and features family member storylines and chapters from several generations throughout the Appalachian hills from grandparents to cousins, aunts and uncles. The prologue giving us a lookback to some of her present day kin is hilarious.

The author spent time comparing her upbringing deep in the woods with nature to Laura Ingalls and the Little House books and does make some fond comparisons. There is a hog butchering scene in grandma's kitchen and no, Shawna Kay, you cannot have the pig bladder to play with as a balloon for you and your little sister.

This title suffered about halfway through the book from a lack of chronological timeline, as some memoirs do. The back and forth between the mid-seventies and the nineties, her father's letters home to his parents from Vietnam, when her mother was a teenager, left me scratching my head a few times.

The end of the book seemed a little complicated as well, featuring Shawna back and forth between home and college, then community college and into a few convoluted relationships. All with her father still hitting her and arguing with her like it was his job. The ending is abrupt and stops cold, as if she ran out of time on deadline.

I think there were salvageable and serviceable writing pieces towards the end that could have been stitched together more cohesively by a better editor - because the first half of the book has a crisp timeline that moves along. But maybe that is how life goes - it gets messy and unpredictable and you just do the best you can. Maybe she will write the next installment and tell us what happened with the adviser and then how she eventually ended up with Dave? Do tell Shawna! I hope to see more of Shawna Kay Rodenberg.

My two favorite passages tagged with sticky notes:

"I know from experience that the price of letting your version of a story exist anywhere outside your own head is that moment you do - it's no longer your version but public property, subject to scrutiny and denial and impossible to control." (Prologue, page xvii)

"Mom tried to tell me that friends come and go but family lasts. She said family was all anyone had, but that made me mad. I though she was making excuses for me, like Mom's do, and I didn't believe her. I would have given just about anything to be one of the girls always surrounded by a pack of friends, the safest girls in the world, untouchable. When one of them had to move away, they made a production of announcing it during class, and a circle of friends, a virtual cloak of friends, wrapped itself around them and wept. I wanted all the friends, more friends than were possible, hundreds of them, an army of girls who thought I was wonderful, that I was worth knowing, and would miss me, or at least notice, if I had to move away. I didn't realize until years later that I already had that, and despite all our squabbles and differences, our complicated history, Mom, Grandma, and Misti were the best friends I'd ever have." (Page 208).

[Jill Crosby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciated the author’s story, and found it authentic that she wrote a ambivalently about her feelings toward her father, a Vietnam Vet raised in an abusive family who returns to his own wife at the end of his tour with a crippling case of PTSD. Rodenberg dispassionately explains his curious abuse towards her as she grows from toddler to 20-year-old, abuse that seems based on her father’s paranoia and need to control every person who is included in his orbit. There is no complete resolution to her being able to explain his rage toward her, but she does not hate him for it.
But the book has some problems keeping it from being a 5-star read, namely the strange timeline of having chapters dedicated to different branches of her family tree, and how their experiences led to the family that produced her. Too many names, too many SIMILAR names, nicknames; too few clear explanations of how these people relate to Rodenberg’s situation in the book. Maybe a family tree chart at the beginning of the book? Better editing in including these stories and how they connect to the author’s circumstances would’ve been helpful. Instead we’re left to extrapolate, for example, how Uncle Tommy’s drunkenness played into Rodenberg’s poor self-image

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The memoir of a woman who grew up in the Appalachian mountains, this is a powerful story of survival. Shawna moves with her family regularly as her parents renew their connections with The Body - a religious cult - and then leave it again to find work. The cycle repeats several times. Always dirt poor, often on the receiving end of harsh punishment, Shawna must navigate her path in a world that seems to constantly change, and one that offers very little opportunity for history not to continually repeat itself.

We are given lots of information about the previous generations of Shawna's family, explanations of how and why they all came to be where they are now, and the lives that they are living.

The book was definitely an eye opener, and I was impressed with Shawna's spirit.

I found the book very choppy though, as the timeline wandered back and forth, and it was hard to follow with relative's story we were reading about and their connections to Shawna. It came over as far more disjointed than it needed to have been.