RUN, GIRLS

Cafaro’s memoir chronicles her journey to move beyond abuse and poverty.

The author, a registered nurse, presents a story of growing up while running away (sometimes literally) from traumatic family situations and eventually moving toward new goals and ambitions in life. The book begins with an early grim narrative of Cafaro’s mother’s flight from an abusive marriage (she would come back to this husband and then leave again for another problematic partner). The author then recounts her time in the foster care system and the fight to keep her family together. The story’s focus is on growing up poor in rural Appalachia, yet Cafaro manages to not pathologize her childhood circumstances. The author ultimately achieves a modest but genuine transcendence—after multiple tries, she finishes college and pursues a career in nursing and eventually nursing administration. In her telling, breaking the cycle of poverty and abuse becomes more than a cliché, though her claims of divinely sent help might necessitate suspension of disbelief for some readers. Cafaro’s memoir is depressing in some places, inspiring in others, and frequently distressing—it is hard to read about the horrific abuse the author endured at hands of foster parents for bedwetting, and even harder to subsequently reckon with her belief that even mild corporal punishment used to instill fear is an acceptable child-raising strategy (“‘You can just get a thin switch and if you just barely touch her, it will probably scare her into minding you,’ he said. I nodded my head in agreement”). Yet her daughters appeared to have turned out well, with the younger one enrolling in a program for gifted students at Duke University and then attending college at Appalachian State University. The book could have used additional editing for coherence, but it remains a stirring narrative of not only overcoming a hardscrabble childhood but recognizing some of the strengths of the “hillbillies” of Appalachia.

Much in this narrative is inspiring, but it only gradually reveals where it is going.