Run Girls: A Memoir of an Appalachian Family in Crisis

Born to a sadistic father nicknamed Grizz, Jenny’s family is tortured by his mental abuse and physical cruelty. Jenny’s mother is forced to put her kids in temporary foster care, where they are beaten and mentally tormented. After fighting to get her kids back, Jenny’s mom eagerly escapes to the mountains of Appalachian, Kentucky, with a man she met in a bar. In Kentucky, she and her four daughters suffer through his alcohol-induced, violent fits of rage, often away from him into the woods. Plagued with profound poverty, the family faces constant hardships. With no place to escape, they bravely turn to the folks of Appalachia for help, who give them a place to stay at night and take them to church. Jenny believes her life is turning around after she marries a young man in her church only to become a single mom, finding herself in a familiar place of hardship.

Evocative and captivating, Run Girls is a daring story about surviving an inescapable cycle of abuse and hardship. The girls in this story claw their way out of a dumpster fire, Appalachian-style.