Review of the Pale-Faced Lie An Honest and Heartbreaking Memoir on the Power of Forgiveness and the Strength of the Human Spirit

This is a heartbreaking, utterly riveting memoir. Crow describes growing up under circumstances I cannot image surviving. With an abusive father and mentally disturbed mother, his older sister played the role of a mother at the age of seven to him, who was then three, and little brother Sam.The violence and hideous living conditions David Crow describes growing up with are gut wrenching. What could it be like to know your father is a murderer with no remorse, someone who would easily kill you and actively tried to get you to help kill your mother? It is difficult to accept and concede that there are awful individuals on the planet like Crow's folks who flourish and feed off of others' shortcomings. While emotionally drawn to the family's plight and wanting their torture to come to an end, you are still compelled to find out what happens next. A definite page turner. A cathartic tale that reveals how a son tries to cope with a demon for a father, his love of his family and how human spirit perseveres.The book tells a riveting and bizarre story of a childhood filled with fear, danger, hate, and lies, and how the writer reconciles it with the only answer that can bring it to an end: forgiveness.