Once upon a time, and this is how all the old stories begin, though none of them are true the way this one is true, there was a girl who grew up in the dirt.

Cathrine was thirteen when a man drove up to her family's potato farm in Idaho and took her away. She was fifteen when she had a daughter named Cindy. She spent her whole life running from wolves and teaching her daughter to run too.

Cindy was twelve when she met a boy with a crooked smile who called her pretty. She was thirteen when he put a gun to her mother's head and took her away. She spent thirty years hollow, surviving, keeping her children alive in the shadow of a monster who always found her.

This is not a fairy tale about rescue.

This is a fairy tale about survival, about the women who carry their homes on their backs like turtles, who learn to disappear inside themselves to stay alive, who pass down warnings like heirlooms and escape routes like prayers.

And it's about what happens when one of them finally reaches the beach.

Finally finds her turtles.

Finally gets to choose how her story ends.

A memoir in fairy tale form. A testament to the girls who survived. A reminder that sometimes the bravest thing you can do is keep breathing, and sometimes the bravest thing is to stop on your own terms.

Content advisory: This book contains depictions of child sexual abuse, grooming, domestic violence, kidnapping, addiction, and suicide as an autonomous choice. Resources are provided at the end.