Flying Monkeys

They told her she was the problem. She believed them for thirty-five years.

Grace Mentor learned the rules of survival before she could read: do not be happier than Mother, do not be sadder than Mother, Father will not look up. By age seven, she had built a room behind her eyes—a sanctuary where no one could follow—and named a bird to watch over her: The Keeper.

This is the story of the scapegoat. The identified patient. The one told she was born wrong.

From silent childhood kitchens to a hospital room where she cannot speak the truth; from an eating disorder's desperate arithmetic to a college lecture hall where she finally learns the word for what happened; from the long work of building a self that was never allowed to exist to the fierce joy of becoming a mother who will not repeat the story.

When her mother's narrative reaches for her through flying monkeys—aunts, a sister in a golden cage, a father whose silence is his only gift—Grace must answer the question:

What does it mean to forgive the unforgivable?