Cracked Glass, Part One: The Whole Damned Family

[Guest Shirley G. Perry-Church]

Why do we fear an open and honest discussion on incest and the terrible consequences that it bears on our children? I am trying to tell the world that "I survived incest and lived to tell it." It's time that the prevalence of incest stop being a family secret. I want to tell children all over the world that incest is never okay! The best way to stop it is to have our children tell somebody who they can really trust. Let's start a dialogue right now, Please!

I am the author of Cracked Glass, Part One: The Whole Damned Family, a semi-biography and creative narrative about what it means to have survived in a dysfunctional family that was all but wiped out as a result of adultery, alcoholism and drug addiction,deceit, manipulation, and incest. I am in the process of sending out queries to various agents  trying my best to find representation of my book which when published will be presented in three parts. I have received rejection letters that tell me that my story has merit, that it is heartbreaking and interesting. However, despite the positives in the rejections, I have yet to get an agent to take on this vitally important project.

According to Matsakis, Aphrodite (1991), there are over ten million Americans who have been victims of incest. It has been cited as the most common form of child abuse.  I am one of these abused Americans. As a former classroom teacher of challenged youths, I know many others who are out there. Cracked Glass ... is written to tell children why they must tell if they are being sexually abused by any family member(s).

Here is something that I took from my research on the subject: It is one thing for a child to be abused outside the home because he or she can always run home to safety. But when that child is abused inside the home by a trusted family member, where does he or she run to for safely? We are losing too many of our children to incestuous relationships. It's time to say enough. It's time to let our babies know that Incest is Never Okay!  Please respond.

shirley1212@comcast.net

Cracked Glass Query and Synopsis.docx

[Troy]

Hi Shirley, I've taken the liberty of pasting your word document directly.  People (myself included) are often download attachments that could potentially have malicious code. So I almost never do it.  Plus it save folks a step and is better for SEO.

Thanks for shgaring

Shirley G. Perry-Church

shirley1212@comcast.net      

www.readtoachieve2.com

           

Subject: Cracked Glass, Part 1, The Whole Damned Family—Semi-biography, YA transition to Adult

Dear Agent:

Thank you kindly for the opportunity to present my Semi-biography, Cracked Glass, Part One, The Whole Damned Family.  I started drafting my autobiographical manuscript in 1983 in a desperate attempt to save my family from a generational curse. Unfortunately, my best efforts came under attack and I could not complete my task.

 

Today, I am on a mission to complete what I started. I must tell this story or another generation will be damned to repeat what was started with my grandparents.

 

It all started in the 1920s with a baby girl being taken against the will of her dying mother. In subsequent generations, the children, especially the girls, would pay the ultimate price for the denial of the death request.

 

Carlton Press, Inc. in 1991 described my original manuscript as follows:

SHIRLEY GALE (TWT) is a candid semi-biography based on a life of tragedy and suffering, including fascinating portraits of despicable individuals that were known by the narrator… Shirley Gale Perry’s story is provocative and eloquent in its appraisal of the environment and people encountered, from the faithless husband, to living temporarily in a homeless shelter with her children… It is recommended for its realism and human drama.

 

Cracked Glass, Part One: The Whole Damned Family, an adaptation of Shirley Gale tells the story of how one man destroyed an entire family—eleven sons and daughters, and a host of extended family members while he hid behind religious pretense. Cracked Glass… reveals how this man is my uncle and my daddy at the same time. It tells how, as my daddy, he tried to have sex with me while my momma-aunt lay passed out—drunk—in her bed. How this man used his powers of manipulation and deceit to have his way with his wife’s sisters—first one, then two, then another and another without her taking notice of it when it was happening right before her eyes.

 

Then, if this isn’t enough, you will read how my brother, or was he my cousin at the time, took my virginity? No, he didn’t merely rob me of being a virgin, I know now that my nineteen year old cousin-brother raped my seven year old body and left scars on my heart and soul that I had to conceal in my dreams.

 

And finally, Cracked Glass… will take you into the depth of our dysfunction, revealing how the men in my family tried to turn me into my mother—a negligent single parent and the family whore who allowed men to beat her simply because they could. This does not imply that I didn’t love my mother; it meant that I did not want to become her.

 

Cracked Glass is a sad depiction of the dark side of too many families in our world. This is not a story to taken lightly, but one that each of us should learn from and vow never to have repeated in any family. This story is contained in thirty-six chapters, with a word count of 84,840 words on 278 pages. This is a multiple submission query.

 

Thanks for accepting this manuscript for review. I am hoping that you will find merit in my work. I truly believe that Cracked Glass, Parts One, Two, and Three is destined to be a best-seller and someday even make it to the big screen. I am looking forward to your request for more. Please find the synopsis and the sample chapters per your request. Also, the book proposal is available upon request.

Sincerely,

Shirley G. Perry-Church,

M.Ed., Author, Artist, Educator, and Mentor

 

Organization Memberships:

National Association of Professional Women (NAPW)

Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrator (SCBWI)

Golden Key International Honour Society

 

Synopsis:

Cracked Glass, Part One, The Whole Damned Family uncovers the hellish nightmares that a second and third generation endured simply because a girl child of the first generation was taken and not given back.

 

In the 1920s many Negroes or Coloreds during this era were poor, uneducated, and void of the experiences necessary to exist anywhere but on the tenant farms that they occupied. As sharecroppers, such was the case for my grandparents and their nine children.

 

Their children, my mother, aunts, and uncles, of the second generation, abandoned their farm lives and headed for something bigger in the northeastern cities of Virginia, Richmond, and New York—places where they were too naïve and unprepared to navigate. Once there, they had children, my cousins and me, the children of third generation. While the second generation came with a curse that they were unaware of, their negligent and self-destructive actions resulted in the damnation of their children at the hands of one man. All but a few survived their torment because somehow the one man that they should’ve been able to love, trust, and respect managed to manipulate and destroy their hearts, souls, and minds without  many of them—his children, ever being able to refer to him by his proper title—which should’ve been Daddy.

 

This is a story of “damned” lives that were mysteriously repeated because of an unfulfilled death request. A dying woman requested that her younger sister marry her husband and take care of her four young babies. But the sister wanted no parts in it. What happened from the actions of the original family and the denied request entwined itself into the next generation and resulted in their ultimate demise by way of an unresolved murder, alcohol and drug abuse, sexual deviations—incest and adultery, lies, deceit, trickery, and pure evil—the kind that kills discriminately, with purpose and by selection.

 

However, one girl child, marked for salvation, endured the madness, but somehow emerged, battered and mentally bruised, to tell the story and put an end to the generational curse passed down by her fore parents.

 

Cracked Glass, Part One: The Whole Damned Family is a portrayal of life supported by documentation via a Human Resource, Social Services Agency, The Norfolk Police Department, and a Veteran’s Hospital. It is a book of 84,840 words contained in 36 chapters, on 278 pages.  Cracked Glass … is derived for the original manuscript, Shirley Gale, copyright 1983.

 

Other work:

The Hunt for the Magic Pearl, Copyright 2015, Archway Publishing, Edited and Reviewed by Kirkus Indie, Available where all books are sold, please visit www.readtoachieve2.com

 

The Peanut Butter Trap, Copyright 2015, Completed Manuscript, Edited and Reviewed by Kirkus Indie (Not yet published—being queried) See the Preview section of www.readtoachieve2.com

 

[Guest]

Hello Troy,

Thank you kindly for posting the attachment. I am really trying to get the word out to help our children. Just looking at what happened to that young girl in South Carolina breaks my heart. Who knows what may have been happening in that child's life that caused her to be defiant.  I know that when my students refused to leave the classroom, it was because they feared the additional trouble that they were going to face. I have taught so many children just like her and I tell you this could have been handled entirely differently with a much better outcome.  Thanks again for posting. Let's keep the conversations going for the sake of our kid!