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: CUSP
   
  A RENZO + LUCIA COMPANION
   
  BETHANY-KRIS
  
  For all those lovers of this series …
  
  CONTENTS
   
  CUSP
  ONE
  TWO
  THREE
  FOUR
  FIVE
  SIX
  SEVEN
  EIGHT
  NINE
  TEN
  ELEVEN
  TWELVE
  BIO
  Copyright
  
  ONE
   
  Diego
   
  “Are you up in there, or do I need Trevor to turn on the speakers and—”
  “I’m up,” Diego threw at his closed bedroom door. Behind it, he heard his older sister, Rose,
  laugh under her breath. Jesus. She knew how much he hated her husband’s country music. How a big
  city lawyer like Trevor could stand to listen to that shit, Diego would never understand. Then again,
  there was a lot about his sister’s husband that he couldn’t relate to.
  Nah, that wasn’t it.
  More like Rose and Renzo—his siblings—raised Diego after their addict mother drugged and
  drank her way into a pauper’s grave somewhere. Their father … or rather, his siblings’ father? Who
  knew?  Somethings were just better left alone.
  Then, when Ren couldn’t look after Diego, Rose stepped up alone to do it. For a long time, it was
  just him and h