As The Sycamore Grows

As the Sycamore Grows

Imagine sleeping with the enemy in the hills of Tennessee when the enemy totes a Bible and packs a .38. Mike shoved and slapped but his primary tools were isolation and economic abuse, until he discovered the power of the Lord. As the Sycamore Grows is a nonfiction narrative about ending the legacy of abuse. Ginger McNeil was brought up to pray and obey, but she escaped the padlocked cabin in the woods where she lived off the land with no electricity or telephone. Today she's a court advocate in the domestic court system. Her husband Mike admits the abuse, holds no remorse, and would do it all again. God made women to serve, he says. It's their job. Both Ginger and Mike speak, as do family, friends, ex-spouses, and others. Threading through the story is loss: the alienation of families, a spiritual void from betrayal by their church, and the death of the son Ginger had abandoned. Review Jennie Helderman has taken a heart-breaking issue and boiled it down to human beings, of flesh and blood and lost days and fearful nights. It opens the door on a too-common human story, and closes you in with it. --Rick Bragg, author of All But the Shouting, Ava's Man, The Prince of frogtownRarely has a story of a woman s courageous fight for freedom been told in such an eloquent and moving way. And, even more unusual, we get an open view into the twisted mentality of a man who was able, like so many abusers, to convince the outside world that he was normal. A hard book to put down. --Lundy Bancroft, author of Why Does He DoAs the Sycamore Grows is the true story of immense courage. This story reveals the courage of a woman to live the life facing terror and heartbreak; also the courage of author Jennie Helderman to recount this dramatic and heart-wrenching narrative from both sides. Complete with court documents, interviews from Ginger, and incredibly from husband Mike, this story reveals the words of the man who kept his wife and children secluded in a primitive mountain cabin, living in fear of his temper and the gun strapped at his side. This work is a peek not only into the lives of Ginger and Mike, but a compassionate chronicle of two families mired in patterns of dysfunction. This straightforward account allows the reader to reach his or her own conclusions as to the cause and perpetuation of abuse: troubled family histories, religious fanaticism, emotional instability, or some combination of all three. More than anything this book is a testimony to other women not only of the warning signs of abuse, but also the deep power of the human spirit to overcome and escape. It is a great triumph of hope and evidence of Ginger s resilience to remake her life, overcome her past, and create a future for herself and her sons. You won t be able to put this unique book down, even if it means finishing it at 4am in the morning...like I did. --Susannah Bales, bookseller at Eagle Eye Book Store, Decatur, GA About the Author Jennie Helderman is an Alabama-born-and-bred writer transplanted to Atlanta in her gray-haired years. She broke a glass ceiling at age ten as the first girl to page in the Alabama legislature, the same year she wrote and produced her first play. Since then she's co-authored two books, chaired the editorial committee for a 120,000-circulation quarterly, and written magazine articles and short stories. Her shortest story was nominated for the Pushcart Prize for 2007. She's taught school in rural Alabama, done social work, led community projects, and promoted women's issues. For six years she chaired the board that oversees Alabama's DHR, the state's largest agency and the one that looks into all abuse. She's climbed Mt. Vesuvius, worked at Pompeii, hiked across Spain, and rafted the Grand Canyon.