Raised in a large, loving Irish Catholic family, Valerie O'Connor is a sheltered and innocent young woman who comes of age in the 1950s. When, at age 18, she meets and falls deeply in love with Jack Marsh, a dashing veteran of the Air Force, little does she know that she is about to begin a relationship that is doomed from the start.

Their many years of marriage are filled with Jack's drunken rages followed by morning-after remorse, and scenes of escalating violence witnessed by children too terrified to speak out lest they become Jack's next victims. A powerful story of a marriage begun with the best intentions but cursed by a legacy of violence that will have shocking consequences.

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The final retribution of a battered wife is a familiar trope, to which Sloan (Guilt by Association; Act of God) brings an eye for detail: in this bulky novel, she gives a blow-by-blow account of how a woman comes to marry an abuser, how a man turns into an abuser, and how both manage to keep the violence a secret for some 40 years. At 18, smalltown Vermonter Valerie O'Connor marries gorgeous, macho airplane mechanic Jack Marsh and moves with him to Seattle, then California, where she pursues her dream of raising a large family and he pursues other women. As disappointment turns to anger and need to rage, Jack turns to drink. Valerie bears the brunt of his outbursts—though her children do not escape unscathed— but she fails to act until Jack's fury focuses on his grandson. Sloan's victim revenge novels draw power from the methodical (some might say relentless) way she guides the reader incident by incident, misstep by misstep, through the lives of her characters. Witnessing intimate moments in the newlyweds' bed, or the drug-addled thoughts of a grieving mother, the reader knows what Valerie must do long before she does. If Sloan favors thematic development over language and spontaneity, she makes up for it with her compelling portrait of a troubled family.
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Established in 1991, as family run used bookstore with thousands of gently read books, in stock to chose from. How it all came about I like to read and in about 1987 the house got full. The spare bedroom was literally boxed in. Then in May of 1991 the garage over flowed and then it happen the books had to go as their was no more room in the house or in the garage. So the Book Shop was opened. Well I'm still here and a lot more books have passed through the door of our shop the Ye Old Bookworm. All I wanted was a quite little used bookstore. Well that's how it was suppose to happen. We started with 69,873 and growing to well over 170,000. we got so many book we don't even know what we got. I never planned on being rich and famous. Well I'm still not rich, but the old man is really cleaning up (he's the janitor) and a lot of folks know us now so were sort of famous. We would like to get to know you too. Specialty: General Stock of Paperback and Hardcover, covering just about every subject, most titles listed are Out-Of-Print. Too many too list on line. We Strive to list all of our Hardback books and only a selected few of the Paperback. So if it is not listed that doesn't mean we don't have it. Drop us a line to search our bookshelves for that book your looking for.

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