"Intense, realistic journey into the life of abuse and co-dependency. A gritty thriller."

Mim Bracca plays guitar for a popular rock band. Returning home after a tour, she's kidnapped at gunpoint and driven naked around town. Her captor inexplicably drops her back off at her house unharmed. That's only the beginning of a chaotic, terrifying few days.

When pictures of her nude body turn up on the Internet, she calls the lawyer for the rock group and discovers just how easy money can make some things. An electronic search shows that her house has been bugged and cameras set up at strategic places. Then bodies start turning up, and she's considered a suspect.

Mim retreats into an alcoholic haze, but someone keeps waking her up, painfully. Her past, including the father she considers responsible for the death of her mother, won't let her go. She decides to fight back on her own. Eluding her lawyer, the police and the friends who want to help her, she puts her life on the line for the father who destroyed her.

This is a hard-hitting slice of realism wrapped up in a tense thriller. Nobody's perfect; we all carry baggage. We all have within us the seeds of our destruction and the seeds of our renewal. Rucka takes us on a journey into a life of abuse, co-dependency and hopelessness. Then he brings us back out and sets his character on the way to resurrection. Not a book for everyone, but I couldn't put it down.

Reviewed by Lynne Dillon
Courtesy Old Book Barn Gazette
Posted July 16, 2003