Goodreads asked M.J. Payne:

What mystery in your own life could be a plot for a book?

M.J. Payne My father's side of the family emigrated from Germany to a German colony in Odessa, Russia. I don't know how many generations lived there until they immigrated to the U.S. and lived in the Dakotas. Again I don't know how many generations passed there until they migrated to the West Coast. My great-grandmother produced fifteen children, one a genius and one an idiot. The mystery is how the heritage from the Russian colony produced a number of abusive adults, one my grandmother who abused both males and females and who produced two abusive male sons. The family was involved in strange, cult activities of a horrid and sadistic manner and in the trafficking of children. The mystery is what did the tightly knit family bring with them from the Odessa colony that led them to lead a double life of outwardly normal behavior and hidden cult involvement of abhorrent brutality.

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