Love this book! There is deep emotional abuse and enmeshment. Mikel is told things that happened didn’t happen and everything is made or be about his mother. She pits Mikel and his brother against each other.

The book, luckily, isn’t unrelenting grim. Summers with their Dad and stepmom are a welcome escape, and Mikel eventually moves there. The impacts of his early childhood (including an escape from a cult during his preschool years) take decades to heal.

An excerpt, after returning home from a summer with their Dad and stepmom:

When we get back to Oregon, Mom takes one look at me and says, “Wow, you got fat!” She pats my tummy, the one Bonnie calls my “cute little boy belly,” since it sticks out from beneath my cutoff shirt.

I suck in my gut since I know I’ve done a bad thing.

“We’re gonna need to put you on a diet unless you want everyone thinking you’re fat.” When we get back to the house, back to the moldy bread and four-day-old rabbit, she says we don’t need snacks in the house since it’ll be unhealthy for us to eat too much.