Catherine Madison describes acts of stunning cruelty in a courageous memoir about life with her father, including the time he punched her in the mouth. Madison was a teenager who stayed out five minutes past her curfew. She ran through the streets trying to get home on time. Her father was waiting at the door “sputtering, furious” and yelling, “Where the hell have you been?” Accusations flew about what she’d been doing, and then, Madison writes, “the fist caught me square in the mouth.”

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