As I was thinking about this book, my first instinct was to refer to the author as Maude. After having it drilled into me throughout an English degree, calling an author by their first name is not an instinct I often feel, but the raw and vulnerable way in which Maude Julien tells her story, the loneliness of her childhood, and her struggles with attempting to feign normalcy in adulthood in the wider world make her feel as if she's someone the reader knows personally. The atrocities she suffered in her childhood, her struggle for autonomy and free thought, and the slow petering out of her father's hold over her with the help of her kindly music teacher are hauntingly crafted in this book. I am still incensed on her behalf that her father, mother, and the man who repeatedly assaulted her never paid for the horrible acts they committed in a court of law, or through well-deserved animosity and revile from their peers. In telling her story, Maude Julien refuses to let the world allow her torment go unnoticed, immortalizes herself and the man who saved her as heroes, and immortalizes her tormenters villains in perpetuity.

In the face of the unthinkably horrific, Maude Julien paints a world in which a child can still wonder at butterflies and feel the love of her animal companions. In the face of a seemingly endless void of depression, she shows how the smallest spark can create an unshakable hope.