Title of Book
Virginia Andrews
Such wonderful children. Such a beautiful mother. Such a lovely house. Such endless terror!
It wasn’t that she didn’t love her children. She did. But there was a fortune at stake–a fortune that would assure their later happiness if she could keep the children a secret from her dying father.
So she and her mother hid her darlings away in an unused attic.
Just for a little while.
But the brutal days swelled into agonizing years. Now Cathy, Chris, and the twins wait in their cramped and helpless world, stirred by adult dreams, adult desires, served a meager sustenance by an angry, superstitious grandmother who knows that the Devil works in dark and devious ways. Sometimes he sends children to do his work–children who–one by one–must be destroyed….
‘Way upstairs there are
four secrets hidden.
Blond, beautiful, innocent
struggling to stay alive….
Righteous Anger… Innocent Fear…
Because the grandmother’s wrath had not yet materialized, Chris and I had grown careless. We were not always modest in the bedroom. It was difficult to live, day in–day out, and always keep the intimate places of our bodies secret from the other sex.
And to be perfectly honest, none of us cared very much who saw what.
We should have cared.
We should have been careful.
We should have kept the memory of Momma’s bloody welted back sharply before us, and never, never have forgotten.
A key turned in the door lock. Swiftly I tried to put the dress over my head and pull it down before she came in. But she had seen me naked; it was those glittering, gray stone eyes.
“So!” the grandmother spat, “I have caught you at last… Sinners! you think you look pretty? You think those new young curves are attractive? You like that long golden hair that you brush and curl?”
She smiled then.
The most frightening smile I ever saw…
An amazing book, centered around the four children, the older two who take over being the parents of the younger two.
Caught in the attic, trapped by love, the mother, loved her children, but caught in the trap of money.
Made me cry, made me laugh.
An old book but a goodie.
9
