Impaled on the Horns Of the Devil: The Development of Vulnerability to an Abusive Marriage

With courageous confession, the author describes her high school romance, laced with parental opposition, the pull of premarital sex, and an awareness of guilt before God. After less than a year of marriage to her high school sweetheart, when she begins to recognize her parents' concerns as valid, she meets a man who becomes a destructive force in her life. He encourages her to divorce her husband and instead, become dependent on him for emotional support. With painful honesty she relates how he gains manipulative control over her emotions and moral standards. She joins him in defying biblical commandments and societal conventions. Readers who have suffered through failed marriages will understand her struggles.

The author winds up her memoir by observing what in her background contributes to vulnerability and control by a man who seems to represent the devil. She tells how she eventually escapes from him and an emotionally abusive second marriage. She offers insight to parents and teens about both positive and negative relationships between them, and how those relationships powerfully influence the lives and marital decisions of young adults.

Barbara Boatright, (BS-Indiana University, MA-The University of Chicago) took an early retirement from teaching in California. After intensive training in counseling she served as a lay counselor in her church. Throughout her life she enjoyed journaling as recreation or used it as emotional therapy. She drew on her journals in writing this book. She said the only justification for exposing herself so candidly and sharing her memories with such honesty was the hope that others would learn from her mistakes. In addition to her writing she currently is active in women's groups and in her retirement community. She and her husband live in San Marcos, a rapidly growing city in north San Diego County, California.