Fallen Acres

When You Face Your Greatest Fears, You Find Your Truest Self... The Elliotts are a typical American family: they look content and functional to outsiders, but really, they're navigating difficult family dynamics. Two introverted parents with passionate feelings who have learned to master and subvert their anger find themselves confronted by a drama-fueled oldest daughter, and a self-absorbed middle daughter. The author, their youngest daughter, tries as hard as she can to be the perfect child-she doesn't cause trouble, she stays away from angry scenes. But the repression that makes her passive and avoidant causes her reckless nature to come out in other ways...in a series of bad decisions that lead her, at the age of 40, to a place where she is determined to do the right thing for her parents during their late-life crisis. Her story is one of heartache, loss, lessons learned, truths uncovered. It's about the ways in which God and fate intervene to show us what we're made of. It's a powerful testament to the need for compassion and realism with aging parents and end-of-life issues. But most of all, it's a story of identity and redemption-and how one girl ran away from her hurtful family issues only to find that immersing herself back into her family's world was the way to claim who she really was. Lyrical, honest, and vivid, Fallen Acres is a memoir both deeply relatable and profoundly valuable.