title: Estranged: Leaving Family and Finding Home
author:  Jessica Berger Gross 
description: <b>One of Elle's Best Books of the Summer</b><br /><br />"An unsentimentally courageous memoir."<br /> <b><i>Kirkus</i></b><br /><br />"A gripping memoir."<br /> <b>Glamour.com</b><br /><br />"Riveting."<br /> <b>Newsday</b><br /><br />"Moving, fearless."<br /> <b>Longreads</b><br /><br />"Gripping yet hopeful."<br /> <b>Salon</b><br /><br />"[A] memoir of love, abuse, despair, and hope . . . a reminder that any family can hide a secret and that many victims of abuse go their entire lives without speaking out about it."<br /> <b>Booklist</b><br /><br />"Excellent memoir . . . I couldn't put it down."<br /> <b>The Rumpus</b><br /><br />"What is most striking about<i>Estranged</i>is that Gross chose to share her story at all. She is brave and unshaken . . . Straightforward, unsentimental and matter-of-fact while still a lyrical storyteller."<br /> <b><i>Portland Press Herald</i></b><br /><br />"In a world that celebrates the bonds of mothers and children, and surrounds us with images of happy families celebrating their love, Jessica Berger Grosshas made a brave and lonely choice to cut ties with her family and their abuseand braver still she has chosen to tell us about it. That she survived with the strength to get away is a testimony to her courage. Many readers will recognize their own story, or a piece of it, in this one, and when they do, find comfort."<br /> <b>Joyce Maynard,author of<i>At Home in the World</i>and <i>The Best of Us</i></b>
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  > TABOO 2 - Incest Novellas & Stories  
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  > Vanessa de Sade  
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  > Copyright Poison Pixie Publishing 2011  
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  > TABLE of CONTENTS  
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  > [The House](index_split_001.html#filepos1057)
  
  > [Ugly Betty](index_split_002.html#filepos30023)
  
  > [In the Woods](index_split_003.html#filepos82540)
  
  > [Bonus Fiction](index_split_004.html#filepos111897)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  > The House
  
    
  
  > After the divorce Tabitha found herself a much smaller house. It didn’t look
  > like much and the walls were like paper, but the rent was low and the
  > landlord absent. Room, kitchen, shower, two bedrooms. All that was needed,
  > really, for one thirty-nine-year-old divorcee plus her nineteen-year-old son
  > and the trunk-load of painful memories of a failed marriage.  
  >
  
  > Well, Gary, she thought ruefully as she stowed her wedding photograph away
  > in a drawer, you went the way of all men, didn’t you? Traded in your old
  > model for a new one. And what a new one, at that. Miss Perfect Pants the
  