In The Shadow of Shame

By E Strupp-Martin

In the summer of 1960, Gretchen Schiffer meets her future husband, Peter Neumann, for the first time. She is frustrated that her mother and stepfather had just made her break up with her boyfriend. Now they want her to get married to Peter because he belongs to their religion and they believe an early marriage at the age of sixteen will save her from the sins of the flesh.Four months later in December, despite her misgivings and not being in love with Peter Neumann, Gretchen agrees to marry him. The realization that this is a way to escape the unhappy life with her controlling parents, she leaves her childhood behind and steps into the role of a married woman at an age when she should be looking forward to a sweet sixteenth birthday party instead. But marriage brings on problems she is too young to deal with and her life becomes chaotic. Tormented by flashbacks and childhood memories, she now loses herself in a world between the past and the present. Her rapid change from girl to married woman pushes her to the brink.As memories of her childhood haunt her, she retreats ever deeper into the isolation of her own mind, alienation, and bizarre behavior. When she ultimately runs into the man of her dreams (a man whom she'd first met briefly when she was just ten years old), she finds herself at the crossroads. Will she follow her heart or stay faithful to a husband she doesn't love?Her dilemma brings her to her knees and to a close brush with death. Yet despite the hell that engulfs Gretchen, her primal instinct for survival at any expense makes her search for a way to escape the crosshairs of destruction.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1545457980
• ISBN13: 9781545457986
• Release Date: April 2017
• Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 270 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"