A straight-A student, Emma Snow seems like a happy, normal child-and she would be, were it not for the continuous horrors she experiences at home. Emma Snow seems like an ordinary child. Perhaps a little quiet, with a hearing impairment...she's a straight-A student who loves to read. Emma lives with her two sisters, her father, and her stepmother in a house on Third Street. A house the neighbors avoid discussing. Within the walls of the Snow residence, Emma and her sisters are the target of a never-ending stream of military-style beatings and sexual assault. For ten years, Emma and her sisters suffer-with one short, blissful stay in a foster home showing them what life
could
be like. Emma lives on constant high alert, always waiting for her father's next explosion. All she wants is to live the life other little girls take for granted: To laugh. To be safe. To be a kid. When a crisis center counselor intervenes, it seems Emma and her sisters will finally be free of their tormenter. Surely the judge won't let Emma's abuser go free? But things don't always play out as they should, even when a child predator confesses his crimes.