ReviewsRippedApart

RIPPED APART

A Novel Based on True Happenings

Ripped Apart takes the reader through the myriad of torment and incompetence surrounding the custodial abduction of a child by a violent alcoholic father who absconds with his child to Peru. Ms. Ivey takes you through the heartache and frustration of trying to recover her child, while both the US Government and the Government of Peru sit on their hands and allow this atrocious crime to go unpunished and unresolved.

Based on actual events, this nonfiction novel portrays the heartache of a woman who refuses to give up on her quest to recover her only child. Ripped Apart will make you scream in righteous indignation, shed tears of heartbreak for our female protagonist and rejoice in the outcome. A roller coaster of emotion, this book is difficult to put down.

Author's Note: Even though thousands of children are "stolen" from their custodial parent each year, the laws are as lax today as they were in 1973 regarding a parent removing a child from the United States.

Catherine Paris

Writer's Cabaret

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Marsha thought her life was wonderful. After the short marriage to her high school sweetheart did not work out, she moved from Alabama to Atlanta. Not long after her arrival, she falls for a gentleman thirteen years her senior. After a whirlwind courtship they are married. Marsha soon discovers that all is not a bed of roses. Eric is physically, mentally, and emotionally abusive.

After nine terrible years, Marsha finally gathers the strength to take herself and her five-year-old daughter Ashley, out of this turmoil. The newfound release and happiness is wonderful. Marsha even renews her relationship with her handsome former husband, Tyler. However, Eric is a deeply vengeful man and has sworn to get revenge on Marsha for leaving him.

Eric soon carries out his threat by kidnapping their daughter Ashley and fleeing the country to Lima, Peru. What follows a most heart-wrenching story of a mother's fight with not only her ex-husband, but also two governments, in an effort to regain her daughter?

The renewal of her romance with Tyler makes the time bearable until Marsha must once more face heartbreak when he unexpectedly dies.

How much heartache should one woman have to bear? How much heartache "can" one woman bear and survive? Seven years and many thousands of dollars are spent trying to regain Ashley.

This story had many heart breaking moments. What makes the story more poignant is the fact that it is based on a true story. Ms. Ivey handles a tough subject with great compassion and grace. This was a very engrossing story from the first page.

Reviewed: 2003 by Susan Johnson

PROFESSIONAL REVIEWS

READER REVIEWS

If you like a book that puts you right in the middle of the action, that triggers anger, frustration, your own revenge factor, and even more importantly, the love that oveflows between a mother and her daughter, then you'll love Ripped Apart. Glenda Ivey has authored such a novel, one that you'll have a difficult time putting down until you reach the end.

It's not only the story about a woman who truly loves her daughter, but also remains deeply in love with the high school sweetheart she married, then finally divorced because of an intruding mother-in-law. That's only a tiny part of Marsha's trouble. She meets a latin dance instructor from Lima, Peru, Eric, whose personality is very deceiving, which Marsha discovers after they're married. But they have a daughter. Eventually, heavy drinking enters Eric's life and that leads to mental and physical abuse of Marsha. Eric, the wife beater, tricks Marsha into allowing Ashley, the daughter, to visit him, and he steals her away to Peru. Then begins the major struggle to bring her back home.

This isn't the genre I usually read, but Glenda Ivey's style is so refreshing, easy to read and understand, and the pages whip by so fast, it's that clear and precise. And that's why it's so easy to give this a Highly Recommended rating, five stars no less for an excellent read.

Reviewed by Dan Murr

Author, Historian, Award Winning Author

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Sometimes reading a true story can hit too close to home. Every few pages I would have to put the book down and walk away. Yet, I was drawn back to the story because I was intrigued with how another Mother had coped with having her child kidnaped. Denial turns to gut-wrenching agony, an agony that stays with you every minute of every day. From the first hours when you still hope for answers and simple solutions followed by the weeks that feel like eternity. When you do not know where to turn for help or what to try next to recover your child. The lonely holidays, birthdays and every-day-life events that define a family, bring searing pain.

It happens all too often every day all over the United States - parents have hearts and lives Ripped Apart when children are abducted. It is unbelievable that an act so inherently wrong and obviously illegal, can go unnoticed and draw so little response from the American legal system and the government of the most powerful nation on the earth. Where do you turn for help in those first frantic hours? How do you continue with the every day, mundane tasks of survival? How do you continue the battle, sometimes for years, to be reunited with your child? Then again, how can you not continue the fight? How can you abandon a major part of yourself to someone that is abusive? Can the children - most too young to know what is happening, taken from familiar surroundings

and used as tools to punish an ex-spouse, just be abandoned to a flawed system?

Eric was a well-know dance instructor in Atlanta and his air of sophistication, maturity, and old-world manners intrigued Marsha. He told her that he came from a well- to-do family in Peru with extensive business holdings. He claimed that he had tried the family business but preferred to make a life of his own because his family was too controlling and did not understand him. Didn't she know about needing to get out and make it on your own? A domineering mother had ruled her life. Another domineering mother had ended her marriage to her high-school sweetheart. Marsha could understand Eric's need to get away from his family and to enjoy life. What more did she need to know about his family or his past? They were married without the approval of her mother

who had no understanding or compassion for Jews, but that bias seemed insignificant to a young woman in love.

It didn't take Marsha long to learn that Eric had a drinking problem and an inflated ego that would not tolerate criticism, real or implied. Raised as a Jewish exile in a South American county they taught him that the man was superior and the woman was created to please him and to obey unconditionally. He did not hold a job for long and his get-rich-quick schemes only put them deeper in financial trouble. How could Marsha admit that her mother had been so right about Eric?

At the point of ending her marriage, Marsha discovers she is pregnant. This changes everything. Eric would settle down and work hard and support them now that he was going to be a father. Having come from a broken home, Marsha was determined that her child would not suffer as she had. She could bear the unhappiness and abuses to give her daughter a traditional home. At least that is how she saw it at first.

After Ashley's birth the relationship became more violent until one night Marsha could not endure the beatings any longer. She took her child and fled. Never having trouble getting a job, Marsha worked hard to create a home for herself and Ashley. Life was beginning to be good again. Then, Ashley disappeared . . .

Eric took five year old Ashley to Peru illegally and hid her from her mother for seven years. In every country in the world Ashley's American citizenship would have afforded her some protection and Marsha some recourse for getting her daughter back, not so in Peru. The FBI, the American Embassy, the American legal system, the government of Peru could not, or would not, help in a child custody case. Marsha was determined to get her child back; living was just not living without Ashley.

Ripped Apart chronicles Marsha and Ashley's story and is a tribute to the bond between mother and child and the human spirit that never accepts defeat.

Glenda Ivey has taken a heartbreaking true story and made it very personal for the reader. The insights and struggles she shares as the story unfolds may supply others in similar situations with motivation and knowledge to keep trying. Even if you are never faced with this heartbreak, the book is a good read with compelling characters, flowing story line and evocative drama.

AnJi Bryant