Let the Tornado Come: A Memoir

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RetailFrom an award-winning poet comes this riveting, gorgeous memoir about a young runaway, the trauma that haunted her as an adult, and the friendship with a horse that finally set her free. When she was eleven years old, Rita began to run away. Her father’s violence and her mother’s hostility drove her out of the house and into the streets in search of a better life. This soon led her into a dangerous world of drugs, predatory older men, and the occasional kindness of strangers, but despite the dangers, Rita kept running. One day she came upon a field of horses galloping along a roadside fence, and the sight of them gave her hope. The memory of their hoofbeats stayed with her. Rita survives her harrowing childhood to become a prize-winning writer and the wife of a promising surgeon. But when she is suddenly besieged by terrifying panic attacks, her past trauma threatens her hard-won happiness and the stable, comfortable life she’s built with her husband. Within weeks, she is incapacitated with fear—literally afraid of her own shadow. Realizing that she is facing a life of psychological imprisonment, Rita undertakes a journey to find help through a variety of treatments. It is ultimately through chasing her childhood passion for horses that she meets a spirited, endearing horse named Claret—with his own troubled history—and together they surmount daunting odds as they move toward fear and learn to trust, and ultimately save, each other.**From BooklistChin’s intense, disturbing memoir is notable for not only the level of violence the author suffered while young but also the forthright manner in which she reveals how these experiences carried over into adulthood. As an accomplished poet in a happy marriage, Chin did not appear to be in turmoil, but the debilitating panic attacks that struck her years after she successfully escaped a brutal childhood and overcame drug and sexual abuse could not be denied. While nursing Claret, a troubled, misunderstood horse, she recalls every heartbreaking incident that brought her to such a difficult emotional place. As hardheaded trainers take the wrong approach with Claret, Chin recounts her long search for therapy that would help guide her back to a fulfilling, secure life. As she finally connects with those who understand her pain and, in the process, figures out how to save her horse, Chin emerges triumphant. Her message: never give up until you find the help you need, and don’t be afraid to keep looking. Book clubs will find hours of discussion here. --Colleen Mondor ReviewUnbearably beautiful and unflinching, Rita Zoey Chin's LET THE TORNADO COME is a brilliant portrait of a life skirting the precipice. She has captured masterfully the maelstrom of her years as a runaway, a wife, a sister, a rider, a searcher. But what shines, page after page, is her resilience, in how every day is built. This is a story full of lightning--sudden, intimate, radiant. (Paul Yoon, bestselling author of Snow Hunters) A beautiful memoir of hope in even the most trying of situations. (Flavorwire's "20 New Nonfiction Books That Will Make You Smarter") A featured "Summer Reading Suggestion" in The Boston Globe This lyrical debut memoir reveals the indelible consequences of childhood abuse.... Chin deftly creates the palimpsest of those stories, past and present, in this candid, graceful testimony to remarkable resilience. (Kirkus Reviews) "Unbearably beautiful and unflinching, Rita Zoey Chin’s Let the Tornado Come is a brilliant portrait of a life skirting the precipice. She has captured masterfully the maelstrom of her years as a runaway, a wife, a sister, a rider, a searcher. But what shines, page after page, is her resilience, in how every day is built. This is a story full of lightning—sudden, intimate, radiant." (Paul Yoon, author of Snow Hunters) Let the Tornado Come is as riveting as it sounds. In lyrical yet clear-eyed prose, with a gentleness and humility that belie a fierce inner strength, Rita Zoey Chin illuminates the debilitating consequences of childhood abuse and her search for its antidote. At once heartbreaking and heartening, compassionate and wise, Let the Tornado Come is a story about love—its unmatched enormity, its curative power, its reverberating force that, though not dissimilar to the tremors of fear in our heart, can carry us to a place where we are cherished, and in turn, learn to cherish the life in our care. (Vaddey Ratner, bestselling author of In the Shadow of the Banyan) At the heart of this brave,beautiful memoir is an extraordinary tale of hard-earned compassion and love.Despite all odds, some of the most broken down souls, human and animal alike,can not only heal but can take wing and soar. Rita Zoey Chin offers us herunforgettable story with richly textured, luminous prose—I fell in love withher book from the very first line. (Mira Bartók, bestselling author of The Memory Palace)