Shirley Painter is 83 years old. She shouldn't be. When she was four

years old she was so badly injured she was pronounced dead and taken to the morgue.

The man who so severely injured

her was her father.

This is the story of how a young girl survived growing up in a volatile household in the 1920s and 1930s.

How school, and later university, became her escape route from a family filled with secrets and violence.

It is also the story of how, as a mature woman and a mother herself, she came face to face with what

happened to her as a child. How she had to bring long-buried memories into the light in order to move on.

Beautifully written, this is a disturbing, compelling and ultimately inspirational story.