Author Description

In this raw and haunting memoir, Kristen Gatlin-Langley pulls back the curtain on a childhood steeped in abuse, secrecy, survival, and the long, unrelenting path toward healing. The Day I Should Have Let Him Die is not just a story of trauma-it's a reckoning with what it means to rebuild yourself when the past refuses to stay buried. With lyrical honesty and fierce vulnerability, Gatlin-Langley revisits the moments that shaped her, the silence that almost destroyed her, and the courage it took to reclaim her voice. Through heartbreak, anger, and eventual forgiveness, she learns that joy is not the absence of pain but the quiet defiance to rise anyway. For readers of Educated, The Glass Castle, and I'm Glad My Mom Died, this memoir is a testament to resilience-the story of one woman's fight to break the cycle, to choose life, and to find light in the darkest corners of her past.