Theodore Comings was a veteran of the Vietnam War. He sat his son, Clyde in a chair and berated him for anything less than an 'A,' If his son cried, he'd be taken to a room and whipped. He was told to "suck it up" if he was in pain. Clyde wanted to be a lawyer, but he couldn't make the grades. His father was dead, but he left Clyde insecure and angry. Clyde had one son and his name was Dirk. Dirk was abused by Clyde almost every night in repetition of the cycle. When Dirk was nine years old he was beaten so viciously by his father Clyde that he blacked out down in the cellar. His mother, Jacque Comings, never interfered with her husband's discipline of their son, instead she hid. The next morning after this beating, Dirk found his father dead at the kitchen table from a heart attack. He grew up in the house in Missouri and became an angry young man...Jacque fled her son's black moods telling him to keep the house. She never wanted to see that place again. Dirk got a girl named, Ellie Jenkins pregnant. She was from Kentucky and that's where she went to raise the baby. The child was named Samantha and when she was three years old Ellie was killed in a tragic car accident. They contacted Dirk for custody rights. He was thinking about money. He would get money from Ellie's estate for Sam if he had custody, so he drove to Kentucky and snatched her from her grandmother's driveway. Samantha Comings is the heroine in this story and it opens up with her sitting on the porch step with blood on her hands. The questions come: What happened in this house? What will happen to her? She's just 16. She's been abused and neglected severely for 13 years. She had a friend though, a large stuffed cat she called, Kitty. When Dirk snatched Samantha, she was playing in her big wheel with her real cat, Chee Chee. She was talking to it and dressing it up. As the years progressed she developed a psychosis to escape the realities of molestation. She would revert back to that age where she was just a little girl in her loving grandmother's care. After her father left, she would be locked in a cellar for the night with only the stuffed cat for company. A storm was howling and as she went to the window the sky lit up with jagged lightning streaks. She cried out, but no one heard her. Samantha went to school and was outwardly normal, but at home...she was hiding and on alert from Dirk and his demented behavior. Lucy came into the house and taught Sam about a family and a mother. It didn't last long though. Jacque came with school clothes but she lit out quick. The house held way too many dark memories for her. No one knew about the rapes. It first happened at ten years old and by 16, Sam had been raped 5 times. A special committee was formed to interview Samantha and assess her aptitude to stand trial. Four people assigned from the justice department were sent in to the facility to meet her. Every one of them was different, sent for different reasons to search for different things, yet they all felt the same about her. They saw a fragile young girl with freckles, who'd survived atrocious circumstances before snapping. Even the prosecuting attorney fell in love with Sam and brought her some furry warm pink slippers. The story turns when Samantha is brought before a judge who commands the room and the case. She rules in the case, keeping Samantha from a trial. She is sentenced lightly on the grounds of self-defense after the judge hears thirteen minutes of Sam's hypnosis session. Sam is sent to a rehabilitation center to serve out her sentence and receive therapy to understand why she did what she did. In the end, with Doctor Margie Barnes narrating once again, you're taken to a happy ending where Sam is now a 27 year old social worker. She has compiled the voices of children caught in dysfunctional homes and she's speaking at homeless shelters. She finds love with Noah, who will cherish her every second of every day. The sky is bluer than blue

Mode of access: World Wide Web