Today I’m sharing the truest thing I’ve ever written.
It is raw, it is revealing, and it carries the arc of my life in four words: Privilege. Silence. Darkness. Love. These aren’t just themes; they are the bones of my story, the path I walked, and the heart of my book.
Privilege, Silence, Darkness, Love
From the outside, mine looked like a privileged Texas childhood, and in many ways, it truly was. Summers stretched wide beneath skies as endless as hope. I grew up in a town stitched together by ritual and belonging, where my father’s work tied us to the oilfields and to the rare luxuries they afforded: family gatherings, airplanes on the runway, Sunday dresses pressed crisp, and the kind of steady, respectable life that could make a girl believe the world was solid and safe.
The prairie was always calling, even then. Its wind and sky carried a language I didn’t yet understand. But privilege and silence muffled its voice, so faint I mistook it for memory instead of promise. Privilege, for all its comfort, was also a veil. And it wasn’t only privilege. It was the silence of the times, the 1950s and 60s, when children were taught to be seen and not heard. Silence was virtue; propriety was protection; composure was demanded by prominence.
All parents do the best they can with the tools they are given. Mine were handed propriety, and I, a child of chaos, was hard to tame inside it. They believed silence was safety, and I learned to swallow my questions and wear a smile. Later, in my own home, I did the same, using only the tools I had. And sometimes those tools made me a raging screamer. That is another story for another day, but it belongs to the truth as well. That silence seemed safe enough in childhood, but later I would realize it had trained me to walk straight into danger without a second glance.
At twenty-three, darkness found me. I cannot lay it all at his feet. When we met, I was already divided, living two lives: the one expected of me, polished with propriety and privilege, and another, hidden life where sex was given freely, almost carelessly, as though it might buy me love or freedom. That is God’s truth. I was young, unformed, and torn between the silence I had inherited and the hunger to be wanted, seen, and chosen. That fracture in me is part of why I didn’t see him clearly.
Once I was in it, I didn’t recognize how dangerous it would become. Nights when the phone rang and terror breathed through the line. Doors that slammed, words that sliced, threats that turned rooms into cages. Slaps that came out of nowhere, jolting me back into a body I longed to escape. Violence threaded through the days until I no longer knew where safety began or ended. There were moments when I was sure I would not survive the next corner.
Even then, the prairie still called. Quiet, steady, like a song carried on wind. I didn’t believe it was for me. I didn’t believe I was worthy of going home.
Years later, when I picked up M. Scott Peck’s People of the Lie, I finally recognized myself in its pages. Peck wrote of evil not as a cartoon villain but as the daily twisting of truth, the slow erosion of the soul by deceit. And I knew that, yes, I had lived that. But my story held more. It was betrayal writ large: the adulteries with other women, with money, with objects; the humiliations that stripped dignity and worth; the shattering betrayals that cut as deep as the daily cruelties. My life was a mixture of the steady corrosion and the violent rupture, suspense at every turn, until I hardly knew myself inside it.
But even that is not where the story ends. Darkness found me, yes, but love healed me. Not all at once, and not without cost, but slowly, in layers. Love came through faith, through grace, through the constancy of prairie roots that never stopped calling my name. By the time I could hear that call clearly, I was broken, truly broken.
And then, love came through a man. Strong and quiet, protective, loyal, loving, and true. He was living proof that not all silence is cruel, that not all strength is weaponized. His steady presence gave me enough courage to believe the call was for me after all. With him beside me, I could finally hear the prairie again, whispering over and over: come home, come home. And I knew it had been waiting for me all along.
That is the story I tell in Bones Beneath the Prairie. Not only the story of evil cloaked in charm and the betrayals that followed, but also the story of a woman running corners sharp with danger, holding her breath, wondering if she would survive. A memoir that reads with the urgency of a novel: suspense, heartbreak, prairie light, and finally, the love that steadied me when all else was lost.
If you have lived through darkness, I hope these pages offer recognition and courage. And if you haven’t, I invite you to read for the sheer pull of story, for the chills, the turns, the heart-pounding pages that lead at last to redemption. Memoir is not only testimony; it is art. And story told true has the power to light lanterns in places we didn’t even know were dark.
Privilege hid me. Silence shaped me. Darkness found me. Love healed me.
That is the arc of my life, and the heart of my book.
✨ Bones Beneath the Prairie — Collector’s Editions are now available. ✨
📖 Signed hardcovers (15 remain) and paperbacks (47 remain) → bonesbeneaththeprairie.com/shop/
📖 eBook preorder special — $4.99 on Amazon
And if you’d like to join from me, personal and true, you can join here: bonesbeneaththeprairie.com/#newsletter
With gratitude and grace,
Roseann
