Author Description

Beyond the Cave is a story about a woman's quest to see herself through a different lens after a difficult childhood. This is not a typical story of abuse, but is instead a story of discovery, hope and optimism that can come despite life's many challenges and roadblocks-offering insight for our heroine, Emma, who finds it is indeed her life's challenges that foster a unique path toward greater insight and wisdom. Emma is a psychologist who takes on a new patient, Grace, a young woman with a distinctively troubled life. Emma immediately connects with her because they were both abandoned by their mothers when they were young and Emma remembered firsthand the pain and destruction she felt as a child. With the help of Emma, Grace prepares to leave her meth-manufacturing boyfriend for good, but before she gets out the door he and his friends drug, rape and beat her, leaving her in an unconscious pile at the hospital entrance. Just as Emma commits to finding the perpetrators, she seeks out the help of two men that will offer her exactly what she needs for both herself and for Grace-Dr. Richard Peck, a well-known Psychologist and Grayson Beck, a Private Detective. Emma's talks with Dr. Peck about who she became as a result of her chaotic and unpredictable young life in candid and sometimes disturbing dialogue. She tells him the story of her life in a unique way, using a combination of story-telling and therapeutic conversation that brings family history and contemporary themes together encapsulating a larger picture of personal relationships and the effects of abuse through time. After being abandoned by her mother at a young age, Emma was left alone with her mentally ill and oftentimes tyrannical father. The story unfolds around powerful, esoteric and gut-wrenching conversations as she struggles to find answers to some of life's most difficult questions. Through laughter and tears, pain and deep sorrow, Emma rediscovers the essence of who she always was-before and beyond