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Against a backdrop of highways, diners, and cheap coffee, one couple finds peace through the redemptive power of love.
Told from a wife’s perspective, Dirt Roads and Diner Pie is the story of one couple’s struggle to confront the long-reaching effects of childhood sexual abuse.
Musician and former lead singer of the United States Air Force Band Travis James Humphrey lived for thirty months in a culture of childhood sexual abuse while studying at New Jersey’s prestigious American Boychoir School. After his tenure, Travis buried his memories deep. Years into the marriage, these memories began to surface and threaten their relationship. In an effort to resolve the problems, Shonna and her husband hit the road and navigated their way through the treacherous terrain of mental illness, sexual dysfunction, and shame. She details their journey within a month-long road trip throughout the southeastern United States taken shortly after Travis made his experience public.
While the effect of child sex abuse informs nearly every aspect of their shared life, it does not define their relationship. That is the message Shonna offers: Sexual trauma may dominate, but it need not define the relationship.
Shonna Milliken Humphrey’s nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Salon.com, Down East, and Maine magazine. For two years, she wrote regular food, restaurant, and lifestyle columns for the Maine Sunday Telegram. She holds an MFA in Nonfiction Writing and Literature from Bennington College.
Told from a wife’s perspective, Dirt Roads and Diner Pie is the story of one couple’s struggle to confront the long-reaching effects of childhood sexual abuse.
Musician and former lead singer of the United States Air Force Band Travis James Humphrey lived for thirty months in a culture of childhood sexual abuse while studying at New Jersey’s prestigious American Boychoir School. After his tenure, Travis buried his memories deep. Years into the marriage, these memories began to surface and threaten their relationship. In an effort to resolve the problems, Shonna and her husband hit the road and navigated their way through the treacherous terrain of mental illness, sexual dysfunction, and shame. She details their journey within a month-long road trip throughout the southeastern United States taken shortly after Travis made his experience public.
While the effect of child sex abuse informs nearly every aspect of their shared life, it does not define their relationship. That is the message Shonna offers: Sexual trauma may dominate, but it need not define the relationship.
Shonna Milliken Humphrey’s nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Salon.com, Down East, and Maine magazine. For two years, she wrote regular food, restaurant, and lifestyle columns for the Maine Sunday Telegram. She holds an MFA in Nonfiction Writing and Literature from Bennington College.
Price: $16.95
Pages: 300
Publisher: Central Recovery Press, LLC
Imprint: Central Recovery Press
Publication Date:
02 August 2016
Trim Size: 8.50 X 5.50 in
ISBN: 9781942094227
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs, PSYCHOLOGY / Psychopathology / Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Conflict Resolution, FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Abuse / Child Abuse
Dirt Roads and Diner Pie is filled with irony and humor, as well as heartbreaking, compassionate honesty. This is a story told with grace, and in Shonna’s wise and loving words, it sings.”-Morgan Callan Rogers, author of Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea
“Reading this book was a rare opportunity to follow a couple on the brink and to sit in the backseat of a last-ditch effort road trip to salvage their marriage. The love Shonna Milliken Humphrey has for her husband is evident in the tales of their journey, as is the exhaustion, frustration, and fear that stems from feeling helpless day after day. She presents an important reminder that the partners and family of childhood sexual abuse survivors are not on the sidelines: they are on the front lines. Humphrey also reminds the reader of the power of love, courage, commitment, and the willingness to walk through the darkness rather than run away from it. I appreciate that it wasn’t happily ever after in the end, because past trauma never goes away. However, those living with trauma can learn to love themselves, and in the case of this story, so can their partners.”-Brennon P Moore MS, CTT, CADC-II, LPC, The Refuge-A Healing Place
“If shame is the most toxic emotion, compassion and humor are the most powerful antidotes. Shonna Milliken Humphrey delivers both. Simultaneously soft-hearted and ferocious, she is the ideal guide to lead us across the broken ground of child sexual abuse.”-Hannah Holmes, author of The Well-Dressed Ape and The Secret Life of Dust
“Every man who is able to have his story heard is not only taking an important step for his own recovery and healing but is also helping to protect future children from having to live through the same abuse. As the director of Male Survivor, the largest support organization for male survivors of sexual trauma, I fully endorse this book and Shonna’s efforts to bring this issue into a broader, public conversation.”--Christopher M. Anderson, Executive Director, MaleSurvivor.org
“Shonna Milliken Humphrey long has walked the difficult walk of the spouse of a sexual abuse victim. She has now extended a much-needed hand to others in her shoes and opened a large window of understanding needed by the rest of us.”-- Suzanne Strempek Shea, author of Sundays in America and Songs from a Lead-Lined Room
“Reading this book was a rare opportunity to follow a couple on the brink and to sit in the backseat of a last-ditch effort road trip to salvage their marriage. The love Shonna Milliken Humphrey has for her husband is evident in the tales of their journey, as is the exhaustion, frustration, and fear that stems from feeling helpless day after day. She presents an important reminder that the partners and family of childhood sexual abuse survivors are not on the sidelines: they are on the front lines. Humphrey also reminds the reader of the power of love, courage, commitment, and the willingness to walk through the darkness rather than run away from it. I appreciate that it wasn’t happily ever after in the end, because past trauma never goes away. However, those living with trauma can learn to love themselves, and in the case of this story, so can their partners.”-Brennon P Moore MS, CTT, CADC-II, LPC, The Refuge-A Healing Place
“If shame is the most toxic emotion, compassion and humor are the most powerful antidotes. Shonna Milliken Humphrey delivers both. Simultaneously soft-hearted and ferocious, she is the ideal guide to lead us across the broken ground of child sexual abuse.”-Hannah Holmes, author of The Well-Dressed Ape and The Secret Life of Dust
“Every man who is able to have his story heard is not only taking an important step for his own recovery and healing but is also helping to protect future children from having to live through the same abuse. As the director of Male Survivor, the largest support organization for male survivors of sexual trauma, I fully endorse this book and Shonna’s efforts to bring this issue into a broader, public conversation.”--Christopher M. Anderson, Executive Director, MaleSurvivor.org
“Shonna Milliken Humphrey long has walked the difficult walk of the spouse of a sexual abuse victim. She has now extended a much-needed hand to others in her shoes and opened a large window of understanding needed by the rest of us.”-- Suzanne Strempek Shea, author of Sundays in America and Songs from a Lead-Lined Room
Shonna Milliken Humphrey: Shonna Milliken Humphrey’s nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Salon.com, Down East, and Maine magazine. For two years, she wrote regular food, restaurant, and lifestyle columns for the Maine Sunday Telegram.
She holds an MFA in Nonfiction Writing and Literature from Benni
She holds an MFA in Nonfiction Writing and Literature from Benni