Shadow Heart (Broken Bottle Series Book 1)

SHADOW HEART- A Coming of Age Story. A Love Story. A Family Drama about acceptance, forgiveness, and the first novel in the Broken Bottles Series. Told from the raw journals which Nicky Young kept as a young girl and through adulthood. We begin when Nicky and her sister, Jenise Young, are just girls and their alcoholic father has flown into a rage. 

• "These evenings occur frequently. We are caught in a spider's web, wrapped in our father's terrible addiction," Nicky writes.

This is a love story, sharing the painful and glorious details of what it means to grow up in a dysfunctional family battling alcoholism.  Security. Stability. Trust. Intimacy -- Nicky craves them all.

• "As a child growing up in a family battling alcoholism, this is what I know: Something bad is coming; it always does. I can't ask for help; I'm too ashamed. I can't talk about our secrets; no one understands. I can't trust anyone; they always leave."

Enter Ryan Tilton, a sexy professional baseball player.Enter Jerry Stowe, a boy from her childhood who shares in the family dysfunction with a father who can't seem to give him a lesson without being physical.Enter being accepted to Stanford.

• "My house was like two worlds: one in which I could breathe freely, and the other where I tiptoed quietly. In the second world, I looked for a place to hide away."

Intimacy, being vulnerable and opening her heart - are these possible for Nicky when she can't even love herself? It can take years to let go of fears and anger. Can she forgive her parents before her heart closes completely and she focuses only on her career and education? Or will she let the fortress she's built around her heart remain as cold and hard as steel?

• "Before that night, I didn't understand. Now, I could see that sometimes, choices weren't ours to make. The randomness of life sweeps us up into its arms, lifting our evening shadows and giving way to a new kind of dawn. With it, came the chance to take a risk and change everything."