Family violence -- United States -- Biography. |
Abused women -- United States -- Biography. |
Marital violence -- United States. |
Spousal abuse -- United States. |
Abusive men |
Sundberg, Kelly. |
Domestic violence |
Household violence |
Interparental violence |
Intrafamily violence |
Battered women |
Conjugal violence |
Spousal violence |
Abuse of spouses |
Battering of spouses |
Beating of spouses |
Spousal battering |
Spousal beating |
Spouse battering |
Spouse beating |
Spouses -- Abuse of |
Abusive boyfriends |
Abusive fathers |
Abusive husbands |
Batterers, Male |
Male batterers |
Available:
Library | Shelf Number | Shelf Location | Status |
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Searching... East Bridgewater Public Library | 92 SUNDBERG 2018 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Fairhaven-Millicent | B SUNDBERG (KEL) SUN 2018 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Foxboro - Boyden Library | B SUNDBERG | BIOGRAPHY | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Mansfield Public Library | 362.82 S | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... New Bedford Francis J. Lawler Branch | B SUNDBERG 2018 | BIOGRAPHY | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
"It is a hell of a thing to write about brutality and suffering with strength, grace, generosity and beauty. That's precisely what Kelly Sundberg has done in her gripping memoir about marriage and domestic violence. Sundberg's honesty is astonishing, how she laid so much of herself bare, how she did not demonize a man who deserves to be demonized. Instead, she offers a portrait of a broken man and a broken marriage and an abiding love, what it took to set herself free from it all. In shimmering, open hearted prose, she shows that it took everything."--Roxane Gay, author of Hunger and Bad Feminist
"In her stunning memoir, Kelly Sundberg examines the heart-breaking bonds of love, detailing her near decade-long marriage's slide into horrific abuse. Sundberg shares her own confusions, fears and empathy for her violent husband, even as she comes to realize he will never change. This is an immensely courageous story that will break your heart, leave you in tears, and, finally, offer hope and redemption. Brava, Kelly Sundberg."--Rene Denfeld, author of The Child Finder
"A fierce, frightening, soulful reckoning--Goodbye, Sweet Girl is an expertly rendered memoir that investigates why we stay in relationships that hurt us, and how we survive when we leave them. Kelly Sundberg is a force. She has written the rare book that has the power to change lives."--Christa Parravani, author of Her: A Memoir
In this brave and beautiful memoir, written with the raw honesty and devastating openness of The Glass Castle and The Liar's Club, a woman chronicles how her marriage devolved from a love story into a shocking tale of abuse--examining the tenderness and violence entwined in the relationship, why she endured years of physical and emotional pain, and how she eventually broke free.
"You made me hit you in the face," he said mournfully. "Now everyone is going to know." "I know," I said. "I'm sorry."
Kelly Sundberg's husband, Caleb, was a funny, warm, supportive man and a wonderful father to their little boy Reed. He was also vengeful and violent. But Sundberg did not know that when she fell in love, and for years told herself he would get better. It took a decade for her to ultimately accept that the partnership she desired could not work with such a broken man. In her remarkable book, she offers an intimate record of the joys and terrors that accompanied her long, difficult awakening, and presents a haunting, heartbreaking glimpse into why women remain too long in dangerous relationships.
To understand herself and her violent marriage, Sundberg looks to her childhood in Salmon, a small, isolated mountain community known as the most redneck town in Idaho. Like her marriage, Salmon is a place of deep contradictions, where Mormon ranchers and hippie back-to-landers live side-by-side; a place of magical beauty riven by secret brutality; a place that takes pride in its individualism and rugged self-sufficiency, yet is beholden to church and communal standards at all costs.
Mesmerizing and poetic, Goodbye, Sweet Girl is a harrowing, cautionary, and ultimately redemptive tale that brilliantly illuminates one woman's transformation as she gradually rejects the painful reality of her violent life at the hands of the man who is supposed to cherish her, begins to accept responsibility for herself, and learns to believe that she deserves better.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this powerful debut memoir, Sundberg delivers a harrowing account of an abusive marriage and how she left it. Upon getting pregnant at 26, Sundberg married her boyfriend, Caleb, and over the course of eight years, Caleb went from screaming at Sundberg to beating and choking her. In their early years, the couple lived in Idaho, finding joy in their son and sometimes each other, despite Caleb's fiery temper and Sundberg's bouts of depression. Sundberg presents candid portraits of herself and Caleb as complicated people that transcend abuse stereotypes-she is ambitious and outgoing, and her husband is sensitive and anxious. As Sundberg found professional success as a writer, Caleb, also a writer, felt threatened and the abuse intensified. Though they attended counseling and Caleb attempted sobriety, things got worse. When Caleb smashed a ceramic bowl into her foot, causing an injury Sundberg wasn't able to hide, she finally left him. After settling her divorce, Sundberg moved to Ohio with her son to begin a PhD program. Throughout the book, Sundberg contemplates a recurring question in the public discourse on domestic violence-why women stay with abusive men (for example, that women might overvalue the sacredness of marriage). Sundberg cogently ties together the painful chain of events in her life and the personal growth that resulted from it. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
An essayist's debut memoir about her decadelong struggle to leave a violent, emotionally unstable husband.When Idaho native Sundberg met Caleb, whose "West Virginia drawl made him seem gentlemanly," she had no idea that within six months, they would be engaged and pregnant. Both were in their 20s and equally unprepared for commitment. But the author chose to forget their relationship was neither "idyllic [n]or blissful" and "love him through my fear," just as she had a childhood friend who had once chased her with a knife. Caleb's dark side surfaced not long after their engagement, as they were returning from a hunting trip. Sundberg immediately assumed responsibility for his rage and felt "grateful" when he forgave her. Caleb's sudden fits of anger soon became a permanent feature of their relationship, as did the heavy drinking he managed to keep hidden during their courtship. The author also discovered that Caleb had cheated on her with three women while they had been dating, but only after they had married. As with all of her husband's other transgressions, she accepted his tearful apologies as proof that he would change. Sundberg became depressed enough that she sought out counseling. The therapist was able to name the destructive behaviors in her marriage for what they were: domestic violence. Nevertheless, the cycle of brutality and tenderness continued. Eventually, the author and her husband moved to West Virginia. There, the author began a graduate program and found the success Caleb did not have with his own writing. Only after an especially savage incident that required police and paramedic assistance was Sundberg finally able to move on from a broken relationship and begin the long process of healing her own life. By turns wrenching and lyrical, Sundberg's book is an unflinching exploration of both domestic violence and one woman's long, often painful evolution from codependence to self-respect.A courageously honest memoir. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Sundberg's essay It Will Look Like a Sunset was featured in The Best American Essays, 2015 and is often taught to creative-nonfiction students for its humbling and raw portrayal of the cycles of domestic abuse. This memoir, the author's first book, is a fuller picture of the pain and confusion of her marriage to Caleb, a writer and adjunct professor. The two fell fast and hard, getting married and giving birth within the first year of their partnership. Things just as quickly went wrong, as Caleb asserted his control in increasingly violent ways. Was it her mother's distance, the unrealistic portrayals of intimacy in romance novels, past dating experiences, or something else entirely that led Sundberg to believe she deserved Caleb's twisted love? Sundberg revisits the hollows of Idaho, where she grew up, and the stunted mountains of West Virginia, where she and Caleb lived in turmoil, in order to dissect the relationship for the sake of her own healing. Somehow, through her candid and brave accounts of Caleb's physical attacks, she never vilifies her former husband, painting him instead as the complex and ill man he was. Lyrical and taut, her memoir provides readers with an honest and critical account of partner violence.--Eathorne, Courtney Copyright 2018 Booklist
Table of Contents
Prologue | p. 1 |
1 Blue | p. 9 |
2 Queen of Swords | p. 23 |
3 The Perfect Family | p. 39 |
4 Runaway | p. 52 |
5 Would I Rather? | p. 73 |
6 Saved | p. 74 |
7 I Love You | p. 89 |
8 Demolition | p. 103 |
9 That Hot, Dry Summer | p. 118 |
10 Take Me to the River | p. 131 |
11 Broken Things | p. 143 |
12 Playlist for a Broken Heart | p. 153 |
13 His Ghost in Her Bones | p. 164 |
14 Christmas Baby | p. 172 |
15 What I Didn't Write | p. 183 |
16 A Hard Heart | p. 187 |
17 The Archivist | p. 196 |
18 It Will Look Like a Sunset | p. 209 |
19 An Incomplete List of Reasons He Was Violent | p. 221 |
20 I Just Don't Know What to Believe | p. 225 |
21 Goodbye, Sweet Girl | p. 238 |
Epilogue: The House in the Hollow | p. 251 |
Acknowledgments | p. 255 |