Imagine Foxfire living while 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. A briefcase-carrying professional woman. 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. Thus Ginger is revealed as a flawed heroine who as a rebellious teenage bride abandoned her baby. Mike ran away from his father’s fists but years later glimpsed himself in his father’s casket. From south Texas to Tennessee the couple spiral down into poverty---by Mike’s choice---and abuse enforced by religion and a pistol. 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. It’s this teenage boy’s suicide, symbolized by a sycamore tree, which becomes the wedge that allows Ginger to break free and ultimately work to help batterers change. Will Mike change? Will the legacy of abuse end?
Author description
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 which 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. She likes Scrabble, mysteries and photography.
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