"My mind kept centering on the race to find my missing daughter, Triana. I wondered if this search would ever end. I had first lost her when she was one-year-old, and it took me eight months to find her. This time she had been missing for over two years. I would search for her, and would do so until I found her, if it took my entire life."
Rosalie Hollingsworth is a strong, courageous, and determined woman who lets nothing get in the way once she’s made up her mind to do something. The something in this case is the inconceivable journeys to regain her daughter twice after Triana was kidnapped by her father. This is Rosalie’s story as much as it is the story of Triana, who as a young child couldn’t understand what was happening — but who later learned the facts and somehow had her mother’s stamina to overcome this horrific period in her young life and thrive.
Rosalie, as a mother, could only imagine what it was like for Triana, but she could not fathom the horrors of what life turned out to be for little Triana. From rabies after being bitten by a dog, to being raped by strange men, to the recurrent lice infestations leading to the shaving of her hair, Triana grew up under conditions no child should have to endure. Adjusting to Franco’s juggling of wives (sometimes with children of their own), and by far the worst thing a father can tell his child -— that her mother was evil and that she was dead — Triana amazingly came through it all without a deep scar.
Hollingsworth chose to structure her story as a diary, which suits the purpose well. She takes you along on the journey to recover Triana in hope that others in the same situation will see that with determination and strength, the impossible may not be impossible after all. Her pace is right on, with tension building up where needed and letting low where relief should be felt. Beginning with the first kidnap retrieval, Hollingsworth uses a back flash in the second chapter to reveal what led up to the kidnapping and clues us in to the relationship between herself and Franco.
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