Just a short update: Had my surgery Monday and am back home already. Dr. said it was succesful, other than a bit of nerve damage that is causing my eye to droop a little bit. But it should go away in a few months. Thank you for all your kind thoughts - I really appreciated them so much!
- Sharon
The sins of mothers and fathers often come back to rest heavily on the shoulders of their children. Nevermore eloquently has this message been delivered than through the debut novel, “The Murderer’s Daughters,” by Randy Susan Meyers.
Growing up in Brooklyn was no picnic for ten-year old Lulu and her little sister, Merry. Their mother was a dissatisfied woman who loved to flirt and look pretty, and hated her husband with a passion. Their father loved their mother with a hunger that couldn’t be quenched. After throwing her husband out, Lulu’s mother told her never to let Daddy back in the house again.
But one fateful day, Lulu did let Daddy in, and then watched horrified as he killed her mother, stabbed her little sister and then slashed his own wrists right in front of her. Merry survived the attack, but the two girls would be forever scarred by the actions of their father and mother.
Orphaned, and effectively abandoned by their mother’s family, Lulu and Merry grow up in less-than stellar group home where they had to fight daily for their very existence. Their only relative who would have any contact with the girls was their father’s mother, and she tried to encourage both of them to visit their father in prison – after all, they were his family. Lulu refused to go, but Merry made the trip with her grandmother to the Staten Island prison for the rest of the old woman’s life, and she continued the journey into her adulthood.
As they grew older, Lulu and Merry each handled their past in markedly different ways. Lulu choosing to brush the family’s secrets under the rug, while Merry dealt with it through a daze of alcohol, drugs and men. It’s not until the girls learn of their father’s upcoming release from prison that they must deal with the realization that the lies and secrets would soon become facts they would have to face together.
With “The Murderer’s Daughters,” Randy Susan Meyers has crafted a gut-wrenchingly powerful, emotional novel that takes a very real look at how today’s society handles crimes of passions and their consequences. She handles the subject with a tough-love, gloves-off approach that is both sensitive and practical, and as a result gives readers a look into a life that many live and deal with on a daily basis.
