The House Inside Me

Healing old wounds requires facing the past, but what if your own mind betrays you? You can't release, what you can't remember.

A twenty-five year old woman finds herself the topic of a small-town gossip column accused of starting a strange fire which has the locals in a tizzy. Cassidy Cleo Collard has no memory of the incident, only gaps of lost time and a bizarre gash on her palm. When she was a child, her peculiar, kooky great-grandmother warned her of the family curse but that's when she believed in the old stories and ways of seven.

Not anymore. Cassidy is in a heap of trouble. Ordered to psychiatric evaluation, Cassidy must pull back the curtains of her past to face the secrets she left there, or succumb to a family curse that may, or may not exist, and along the way prove her innocence.

Set in the rural South during the 70's and 80's, the novel switches between adult and child, present-day and past, where Cassidy the adult, together with the Cass the child, come to terms with family secrets, generational curses and the haunting redemptive journey to finding her one true voice.

THE HOUSE INSIDE ME is a raw, revealing glance inside the brokenness of a mind under siege. A chilling portrait of one woman's story of mayhem and madness, its creative genius and its destructive tentacles. It captures the unbearable cost of undiagnosed mental illness, and the lasting effects of childhood suppression, trauma and sexual abuse long after we've become an adult. Despite it all, the story demonstrates the deep-seated roots of family, faith, tradition, and the power of the human mind to heal and become a display of hope, forgiveness and purpose.