Overview

A raw, powerful memoir of enduring family loss, generational trauma, and one woman's defiant journey to redefine her legacy. Fallen Leaves: Life, Death, and the Seasons Between is Jean Starling's unflinching story of survival, a book for anyone who has endured cruelty and questioned, ""Why me?"" Growing up on a dirt-poor North Carolina farm, Jean was just three when her father, Daddy, died tragically at age thirty-three, leaving Mama to raise nine children in a world of poverty, violence, and shame. What followed was a lifelong ""cascade of loss"" as five of Jean's siblings succumbed to the family curse of heart disease and diabetes. To cope, Jean ran away, but the repressed pain eventually forced her to face her past and write the truth. In this beautiful narrative, Jean Starling reveals: The Shocking Truth: The decades-long secret that her father's death was not from a heart attack, but due to a massive overdose of insulin administered during ""medical experimentation"" in a mental institution-a betrayal that haunted her family for decades. The Struggle for Identity: How Jean married at age fourteen to escape, only to trade one volatile situation for an eighteen-year abusive marriage, leading to a fierce vow of independence. The Triumph of the Human Spirit: Her journey of confronting the darkest parts of her history, including molestation, abuse, and the stigma of having a father who ""went crazy,"" ultimately finding wholeness and peace. This is a story that explores faith, survival, and the unbreakable bond of family. Fallen Leaves is a compelling promise that even the deepest hurts can be transformed into a magnificent legacy.

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Jean Starling was born and raised on a tobacco farm in rural North Carolina, one of nine children in a ""dirt-poor"" Southern family. Her life was shaped by profound loss and hardship, beginning with the tragic death of her father when she was just three years old. Her childhood was marked by poverty, abuse, and the constant presence of disease and death within her family.In an attempt to escape, she became a teen bride at fourteen and moved to the Pacific Northwest. After surviving an 18-year abusive marriage, she found herself a divorced single mother to four daughters. With relentless determination, she rebuilt her life, putting herself through college to earn both a bachelor's and a master's degree in business while working full-time.Writing Fallen Leaves became an essential part of her healing journey. It is her way of honoring the memories of her parents, sisters, and brothers, and processing the fear, anger, and pain of losing them. Her story is a testament to the power of the human spirit to endure unimaginable odds and a tribute to the family that shaped her.

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