FAR FROM BROKEN: A MOTHER UNHORSES EVIL is a memoir about the abuse of our infants, coming to terms with the existence of evil, and the healing power of nature, horses, and family.

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What is true: Our precious newborn twins, Grace and Kalvin, slept in the nursery adjoining our bedroom in Park City, Utah. With ten swift steps, I could be at their door. I could have stopped it, had I known.

What is also true: Behind that door, the nurse we hired to help us care for our infants a few nights a week, a thirty-one year old woman with superb credentials, extensive experience with multiples, a ten-year veteran at a premier Salt Lake children’s hospital, purposefully and grievously injured our children.

Worse, Kalvin and Grace were not the first infants she had abused. Six months before coming to work for us, the nurse had broken the bones of two-week old twins in Belgium before fleeing the country in the middle of the night to avoid prosecution.

The resulting ordeals, including our twins’ treatment and recovery, the woman’s arrest and protracted criminal trial (and the ensuing legal and media circus), and the journey to heal our psychological and spiritual wounds—which for me was companioned by a reining horse named Woody—form the armature of FAR FROM BROKEN. The memoir is also a touching extended eulogy for my grandmother whose fierce resilience and wisdom guided me through the trauma and continues to guide my life. 

2015; 115,000 words