A Little Girl in a Woman's Shadow

This true story of the adolescence years of an individual are so brutal, it makes one stop and think, how could this be. Finding herself in many roles, trying to please her husband, being a loving mother and adopting to a new family. In and out of consciousness, battered and gasping for breath, she heard her attacker's voice saying "if you run, I'll drown you." Her memory of that event, getting home at daybreak, where she collapsed startles her back to reality. As time passes, she faces situations never imagined. The brutality and neglect of this innocent child, who needed the love and protection of loving parents, found herself in a fight for her life and safety for her children.

Ruth Spurlin, born to an alcoholic father and a strict disciplinarian mother. Living in poverty, she went to work at the age of nine as a farm hand. Married at fourteen convinced she would be moving from poverty and fear, to a new hope of joy with a loving husband. However, she found herself living in more fear and desperately trying to protect herself and her children from a husband who frequently beat her, once so badly he killed their unborn baby. This true story of her struggles to save her life and protect her children carries a message for young girls and women to read before they make the mistakes she made.