"In 1919, without warning, a little four-year-old girl in Rome, Georgia was given to a family she had never seen before. From a situation of abject poverty, she was provided with a life of safety and privilege her siblings left behind would never have. But with this life of privilege came a childhood full of conflict as she faced another struggle: living with a tyrannical, difficult, unpredictable, impossible-to-please woman who had become her new mother. Years later in her teens, while spending her college vacation working at an exclusive mountain lodge, she met a young man named Harry Rust from Birmingham, Alabama, with whom she experienced an instant, overwhelming attraction. After a brief infatuation, they were separated by distance and circumstances for over two and a half years, years of letter writing and longing. Harry became her longed-for escape from her ironhanded mother and her dream for a wondrous future full of possibilities. But the future is not always what one envisions. In 1936, she and Harry married, barely knowing each other, but both madly sure of the certainty of their love. Little did she realize that she had escaped from life with one difficult personality to another who was not only the intensely passionate love of her life, but a man with two distinct personalities: the affectionate, amazingly talented man with whom she fell in love, and a flawed, desperately mentally ill individual. This true story, full of details of the culture, attitudes, foods, smells, and life in the South for a woman in the early to mid-1900s, is an amazing journey into her struggles, triumphs, joys, and sorrows. This is the life of Patti Rust." --