By DAWN SCHILLER, C 2010, is published by Medallion Press
MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW and EXCERPTS
After we have come to understand the slow seduction that Dawn Schiller began to experience as an underage teen, and the way she, John C. Holmes, and Sharon, his wife, moved into living together, and we wonder how much Sharon did or didn't know, we next wonder how it is that the relationship between John and Dawn, which had it's romantic moments no doubt, turned very ugly. The answer seems to be easy. They smoked pot recreationally, but John started using cocaine and he knew that many a person had lost everything they had before he started using. His drug addiction came rapidly upon him and with it he began to steal from his own household. He sold the very rings that he had given Dawn as tokens of his love. He stole from other people too. He looked for cars that were unlocked and stole out of them.
In her book Dawn says that Sharon doesn't know about the pot. The problem I have reading that in the hear and now is that the pot was being smoked in the cottages in the court that the Holmes' managed, including, very much so, in the cottage that John's brother David and wife lived in down the way. Don't know about you, but medical marijuana is legal now where I live, and the smell of neighbors smoking it is very tell tale.
Within a few months, the weekend cocaine high turned into twice and then three times a week. Sharon may not have recognize the smell of pot wafting in the courts, but she did know that John was calling Dawn to meet him over at his brother's cottage a lot at this point.
(Page 239)
Soon John was dealing, mixing powdered baby laxative in with the cocaine powder and Dawn and his brother were helping him. About the same time Sharon offers Dawn the job of managing the cottages full time so she can quit her nursing assistant job and be free to start taking classes. (Pages 230 and 233)
The fun outings, camping and day trips end because they need to be home so they can use. The other tenants notice the unusual behavior and are no longer trusting. They are watching their property and complaining to Sharon. (Page 235)
John promises that he will quit the drug but can't.
There's a difficult visit of John's mother at Christmas to deal with in which she senses something amiss and deliberately ignores Dawn and says that she feels she should have no place in the family. John's mother even calls Dawn a "devil." Sharon tells her, "Dawn is in this family by choice - our decision." (Page 244)
As John becomes holed up in the bathroom for hours doing the drug, he and Sharon stop communicating. (Page 248) and then John accuses Dawn, whose been taking a typing class, of seeing a young stud at school. (Page 249) Soon he is beating her, even cracking her jaw, jealous and threatening to kill her (nonexistent boyfriend.) (Page 259)
He now takes her to sit in the car while he makes his deals on Wonderland at Eddie Nash's, and lets her know that he is engaging with very dangerous people. (Page 265) He becomes an angry man, tearing up a garden, scaring the other tenants, and, one day...
"Sharon sees me crumpled on the porch holding my gut and crying. She steps back into the shadow of the house, emotionless." (Page 266)
Sharon uses her nursing skills to patch Dawn up sometimes but when Dawn threatens suicide, Sharon writes her a letter and says that she has to change or will be kicked out. (Page 277)
This is when John and Dawn leave to live in seedy motels and in a van, basically homeless. Before the day that Dawn makes her break from John, he will witness people being murdered at Nash's, be arrested, go on trial, be freed, and the couple will go on the run to Florida, where they feel safer and resume a more stable life - for a while.
Missy here. Cliffhanger! I want to encourage you to get and read this devastating book. (I hope you'll be inspired to read many of the books that I read first and use as research here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO.)
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