They were five kids with five different fathers and an alcoholic mother who left them to fend for themselves for weeks at a time. Yet through it all they had each other. Rosie, the youngest, was fawned over and shielded by her older sister, Regina. Their mother, Cookie, blew in and out of their lives “like a hurricane, blind and uncaring to everything in her path.”

But when Regina disclosed the truth about her abusive mother to her social worker, she was separated from her younger siblings, Norman and Rosie. And as Rosie discovered after Cookie kidnapped her from foster care, the one thing worse than being abandoned by her mother was living in her presence. Beaten physically, abused emotionally, and forced to labor at the farm where Cookie settled in Idaho, Rosie refused to give in. Like her sister Regina, Rosie had an unfathomable strength in the face of unimaginable hardship—enough to propel her out of Idaho and out of a nightmare.

Filled with maturity and grace, Rosie’s memoir continues the compelling story begun in Etched in Sand-—a shocking yet profoundly moving testament to sisterhood and indomitable courage.