Product Description In 1995 Kentucky Governor Brereton Jones granted parole to ten women who had been convicted of killing, conspiring to kill or of assaulting the men who had abused them for years. The media began referring to them as the Sisters in Pain, a name they embraced. These are their stories.
Interviewed by L. Elisabeth Beattie and Mary Angela Shaughnessy, seven of the women reveal the breath-taking, gut-wrenching details of their ordeals. Many of them suffered abuse almost beyond human comprehension, let alone human endurance. The result is a painfully unforgettable book.
Beattie and Shaughnessy place these stories within the historical and cultural context of domestic violence in America. They explore the legal ramifications of fighting back in language clear to the layperson. And they provide background information about the Sisters in Pain, revealing the ways these women have picked up the pieces of their shattered lives and learned to face their pasts.
Anyone who has ever asked, Why don t they just leave? when faced with such tales will come to understand the interconnected strands of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse that makes simply living through another day a triumph.
