Dear Sister

By Michelle Horton,

Book cover of Dear Sister: A Memoir of Secrets, Survival, and Unbreakable Bonds

Book description

In September 2017, a knock on the door upends Michelle Horton's life forever: her sister had just shot her partner and was now in jail. During the investigation that follows, Michelle learns that Nikki had been hiding horrific abuse for years. Stunned to find herself in a situation she'd only…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Dear Sister as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

We don’t usually hear about the toll that incarcerating a mother, a daughter, or a sister takes on the family left behind. Michelle Horton’s beautiful memoir gives us access to that experience. Horton’s life was upended after her sister, Nicole Addimando, was arrested for killing her partner in self-defense.

Horton documents the next several years of their lives as she, her parents, her son, and Nicole’s children (who Horton took guardianship of while Nicole was in prison) navigated Nicole’s arrest, trial, and imprisonment. Illustrative in the mechanics of putting together a successful survivor-defense campaign, it is heartbreaking and infuriating in…

Taking meticulous notes in the face of a very daunting experience is a bit of the background to Michelle Horton’s memoir, Dear Sister. Imagine you get a knock on the door by the police to inform you that your sister is in jail. One can only imagine what went on in the author’s mind. All is conveyed in a nonfiction, "can’t put the book down" account of her sister who managed to hide the physical, not to mention mental, abuse she was experiencing by her boyfriend and father of her two children.

Michelle just accepted her sister, Nicole Abbimando,…

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