“Stop overreacting, you’re ruining her day!” my mother hissed, grabbing my hair and pushing me over the balcony railing at my sister’s party. I blacked out. When I woke up, the upscale venue was surrounded by federal agents, and my mother was sobbing on her knees while my sister held a document and begged me…

sugar.

For a woman who had survived an attempted murder by her own mother and clawed her way up from the low-income housing of the South End through sheer, desperate grit, this life felt like a stolen dream.

But dreams, I was about to learn, are notoriously fragile. And my past had taught me that the monsters in our lives rarely announce themselves with continue reading …