How EDNOR SCARDENS Prepared Me to Watch THE KEEPERS

by Kathleen Barker

I recently finished viewing all seven parts of the documentary film, "The Keepers" on Netflix.  Tears ran down my face as an immense well of anger overflowed.  Was is because I knew these women personally?  No.  Was it because I was a survivor of abuse?  Yes and no.

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To explain that last answer, I'm going to do something that an author just doesn't do.  I'm going to review my own book, Ednor Scardens.

It all started when I went to a funeral a few years ago, and the eulogy that was delivered gave me pause because it didn't really capture the deceased.  I felt that the speaker didn't know much about her loved one's past.  Then a germ of fear took hold that my own kids didn't know many things about me before I was their mother.  So, I sat down to write down some facts as well as some anecdotes, and, before I knew it, I was typing into the night, and many more nights, as it poured out.

A story began to form, beginning with a girl in the sixth grade, who lived in a Catholic, blue-collar neighborhood, and attended Catholic school.  She gradually learns of the abuse of one of her friends by a parish priest, and then slowly realizes that she could become the next victim.  Some of the characters and material were autobiographical and some were fictitious, to provide a more cohesive story.  As Kate navigates middle school and high school, she moves through the minefield of friendship with her classmates.  Her physical maturity attracts the attention that her emotional immaturity is not equipped to deal with.  The scars slowly accumulate on her psyche.

When Kate moves past a puppy-love relationship with a boy named Gabe, and falls in love with his older brother Michael, her ghosts come out from hiding.  No one ever went to counseling in the 1960's.  No one spoke out against the Catholic Church.  You learned to stay quiet and bury it deep so you could act normal like everyone else. Until...

And the story just won't end.  So you write three more books to get it all out.

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Kathleen Barker was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. A graduate of Blessed Sacrament, the Institute of Notre Dame and Towson University, she spent twenty years as the much-traveled wife of a Navy pilot and has three children. While working for a Fortune 500 insurance company in New Orleans, she wrote feature and human interest articles for their magazine and received the Field Reporter of the Year award. After Hurricane Katrina, she returned to her beloved state of Maryland where she started work on "The Charm City Chronicles". All four volumes, "Ednor Scardens", "The Body War", "The Hurting Year", and "On Gabriel's Wings" are available in Amazon's Kindle store.

   

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