REDEEMED

A memoir of family pain, loss, and redemption through Christian faith.

In this debut nonfiction work, siblings Bianella Orozco-DeLaHoz & Alain Orozco tell the story of the shocking crimes that shook their young lives to the core. When they were 11 (“Nella” and Alain are twins) and going to school in Miami, their mother and uncle were brutally murdered in their home. Suddenly, brother and sister were thrown into a dangerous adult world with nothing more secure to rely upon than their drug-dealing father, who’d brought them into his life of high-stakes crime and violence. The story is told from the alternating viewpoints of each twin, and it quickly becomes clear that crime and violence had been a regular part of their lives long before the death of their mother. Each remembers mounds of cash lying around their home, as well as visits from strangers who would sometimes beat their father while their mother spat in the faces of the intruders. Nella recalls the way this violence drastically shortened the innocence of her childhood: “I was my mother’s confidant, and she would share much of her heartache with me while she drove, which took me out of the role of being her little girl into that of a grownup, even though I was very much not a grownup.” The family’s drama was ongoing; though Nella married and had children, Alain was arrested in Atlanta for drug trafficking and sentenced to 10 years in prison, separating the twins and further splitting their narratives. Half the work chronicles Nella’s happy family life, and half recounts Alain’s experiences in prison, where he found religion. These alternating perspectives make for increasingly fascinating reading; in the preface, the authors compare their narrative to that of Akira Kurosawa’s classic film Rashomon, famous for its multiple viewpoints. The tender moments between brother and sister consistently shine through, as when Nella first saw her brother after he’d been released from prison and immediately noticed how skinny he was (“I just wanted to feed him”).

A touching and compellingly told story of a brother and sister living fractured lives.