title: Sister Secrets: A Brother's Reveal
author: Matthew Valan
description: Matt Valan asks, Are there some secrets too terrible to tell? I honestly don t have the answer. But if we don t share them, we ll take them to our graves. For him, the better choice has been to share. His first book, Sister Secrets: A Brother s Reveal lays bare the sorrows and regrets that shadow the fifth0generation farmstead where he and wife Kathy still live a few miles south of Moorhead a window onto bright lives of promise shaken and shuttered by abuse, mental illness and tragedy, culminating in the violent crash that killed one sister and, for the other, the murder that took her husband s life. Ultimately, he says, the tragic family saga is a story of hope. Everyone has something dark and terrible in their lives, or they will someday, he says. Ultimately I ve come to understand you can survive anything anything if you acknowledge the pain and let air in on the wound. Now in this 36th year of youth and ordained ministry, Matt says the telling of the Valan family saga has been both painful and cathartic not just for himself, but for the entire family, from his late parents Merlyn and Shirlee (both living during their daughter s travails) to their adult grandchildren still coping today. The elder brother recounts the serious mental illness that troubled his sisters Liz and Cordee throughout their lives, compounded by poor choices in men and marriage. (continued . . .) --Nancy Edmonds Hanson, "Moving On: Matt Valan's Story Offers Hope for Healing," The [Moorhead, MN] Extra, Vol. 18, no. 4 (April 5, 2018): 1, 2.
zlib_text: **Contents**
  
  [Cover](Cover.xhtml)
  
  Chapter One
  
  Chapter Two
  
  Chapter Three
  
  Chapter Four
  
  Chapter Five
  
  Chapter Six
  
  Chapter Seven
  
  Chapter Eight
  
  Chapter Nine
  
  Chapter Ten
  
  Chapter Eleven
  
  Chapter Twelve
  
  Chapter Thirteen
  
  Chapter Fourteen
  
  Chapter Fifteen
  
  Chapter Sixteen
  
  Chapter Seventeen
  
  Chapter Eighteen
  
  Chapter Nineteen
  
  Chapter Twenty
  
  Chapter Twenty-One
  
  Chapter Twenty-Two
  
  Chapter Twenty-Three
  
  Chapter Twenty-Four
  
  Chapter Twenty-Five
  
  Chapter Twenty-Six
  
  Chapter Twenty-Seven
  
  Chapter Twenty-Eight
  
  Chapter Twenty-Nine
  
  Chapter Thirty
  
  Chapter Thirty-One
  
  Chapter Thirty-Two
  
  Chapter Thirty-Three
  
  Extras
  
  Chapter One
  
  The first time was so casual, it didn’t seem real. Even now, it doesn’t seem
  possible. But it was very real—more real than anyone will ever know.
  
  I considered for a long time whether I could ever bring myself to talk about
  any of this. In the end, I came to realize that it simply didn’t matter. No
  one would believe me.
  
  That first time, my twin brother, Jude, a