A Wicked and Intriguing Tale of Abuse, Revenge, and Murder

Sitting in my comfortable kitchen, in my peaceful home looking at the new coffee mug with the humorous message, I anticipated nothing more than a good cup of coffee to start off the day. What happened was, the message to put “someone in a book and kill them” made me laugh. At first. Until a fifty-year-old memory replayed itself and with it came sadness and regret that I hadn’t—didn’t—couldn’t—wouldn’t—? help a beaten, sad young mother, whose name I couldn’t even remember. Whose daughters seemed traumatized, and whose son was already displaying his father’s brutish behavior. I learned something a few days ago from my youngest daughter, Kimberly—who is a grandmother herself now. When she read the finish of this book, in a shocked voice, she told me, “I remember that boy!”—and it is her memory I have recorded in the end of this book. I have written from my imagination about something that is not fiction: abuse. And how it’s handed down generation after generation, criminal, evil, an abomination. I have never walked in the shoes of someone who has suffered abuse and I apologize for presuming to write as if I know what they have endured. I do not know, beyond what I have seen, heard, read about. And just that seems too much. In this story I gave the name “Ted” to that brutish husband-father, and lavished every desired worldly gift on him, and then I killed him. I wish I could have helped that young mother years ago.

L. Kephart-Nash had no thought of writing a second book until a clever message on a cup inspired this story of revenge for a young mother, fifty-two years earlier, abused by her husband. Kephart-Nash is married to a minister, raised six children, and was an obstetrics and geriatrics nurse.