Just try to escape.
Marie will try. But will she succeed?Marie will try. But will she succeed?
Young songbird Marie longs to fly free of her suffocating mill town. But when music school in Chicago offers escape, someone will try to kill her dream.
Is it the scheming daughter of the local mob boss? Or the arrogant pianist she can’t get out of her head?
Or worst of all, her own mother?
↑ READ IT ON AMAZON. THEN, FAST FORWARD SIX DECADES IN THIS FREE SHORT STORY ABOUT MARIE’S DAUGHTER LEE ↓
↑
LEE WAS JUST A CHILD when her mother Marie gave her the artificial rose. But years later its plastic thorns have come to symbolize the bitterness that grew between them.
Now, standing at her mother’s graveside, she must finally decide: Forgive Marie, or cling to the resentment that’s plagued three generations. Begin this sprawling family saga for free right now — just sign up here.
True Story.
My mother got Married to the Mob, and what happened next not only changed our lives forever, but inspired the series of novels you’ll read about on these pages.
1. A Deadly Secret
In just weeks, she’ll run out on the dangerous man sitting beside her. But for now he’s still in the dark, clueless that she and my father have already put in motion a secret plan to escape him and become a family again.
(Read more)
2. “What’ve I done?”
How did she fall into his trap? My mother was a beautiful woman, a talented singer, a “coal miner’s daughter” of sorts. She escaped her Depression-era steel town to launch her career, but soon made choices she would regret.
(Read more)
3. Escape to Dallas
Now was her chance to start anew. Until the mob caught up with us again, and a deadly threat forced her return to my criminal stepfather. I wouldn’t hear from her again until she wrote me eleven years later.
(Read more)
4. Mob Guy is Dead
Now I’m 21 and married, and I finally learn the truth. About what had happened to destroy my family when I was just a child. Why we’d fled the state. The resulting threats against us. And a shocking revelation about how the mob had tracked us down. (Read more)
5. My Search Begins
I’d found the woman who was my mother, and along with her, the facts about what happened. But I hadn’t truly found her. And for years she would continue to elude my attempts to know and understand her. (Read more)
6. Through New Eyes
Now a little sister born during those lost years has appeared, and suddenly I’m confronted with a different perspective on the events of my own life. How will I reconcile such a revisionist history? (Read more)
7. Born to Run
The truth was, escaping her mob-connected husband wasn’t the first time Joanie went on the lamb. She’d been running from the very start, from one hell to the next. (Read more)
8. I Escape the Shadow
In the waning years of the Great Depression, the WPA sent photographers across the US to record its impact. 1940 brought one to Midland, PA, to document the dreary world of 10-year old Joanie. (Read more)
The True Story Timeline
My family's story begins uneventfully in a small factory town in southeastern Ohio.
When my mother launches her singing career, it sparks friction and fighting at home.
My father's issues drive her into the arms of a man who had mob connections.
She leaves him, my parents reconcile, and we flee Ohio for Texas. I'm 11, my sister 13.
Mob threats against the three of us force her reluctant return to entrapment in Ohio.
Hurt, in the dark, I ignore her letters. We won't see each other again until I'm 23.
While we're apart, Mom meets Paul and spends her happiest years with him.
