Goodbye, Sweet Girl

April 9, 2018
In this powerful debut memoir, Sundberg delivers a harrowing account of an abusive marriage and how she left it. Upon getting pregnant at 26, Sundberg married her boyfriend, Caleb, and over the course of eight years, Caleb went from screaming at Sundberg to beating and choking her. In their early years, the couple lived in Idaho, finding joy in their son and sometimes each other, despite Caleb’s fiery temper and Sundberg’s bouts of depression. Sundberg presents candid portraits of herself and Caleb as complicated people that transcend abuse stereotypes—she is ambitious and outgoing, and her husband is sensitive and anxious. As Sundberg found professional success as a writer, Caleb, also a writer, felt threatened and the abuse intensified. Though they attended counseling and Caleb attempted sobriety, things got worse. When Caleb smashed a ceramic bowl into her foot, causing an injury Sundberg wasn’t able to hide, she finally left him. After settling her divorce, Sundberg moved to Ohio with her son to begin a PhD program. Throughout the book, Sundberg contemplates a recurring question in the public discourse on domestic violence—why women stay with abusive men (for example, that women might overvalue the sacredness of marriage). Sundberg cogently ties together the painful chain of events in her life and the personal growth that resulted from it.

April 15, 2018
An essayist's debut memoir about her decadelong struggle to leave a violent, emotionally unstable husband.When Idaho native Sundberg met Caleb, whose "West Virginia drawl made him seem gentlemanly," she had no idea that within six months, they would be engaged and pregnant. Both were in their 20s and equally unprepared for commitment. But the author chose to forget their relationship was neither "idyllic [n]or blissful" and "love him through my fear," just as she had a childhood friend who had once chased her with a knife. Caleb's dark side surfaced not long after their engagement, as they were returning from a hunting trip. Sundberg immediately assumed responsibility for his rage and felt "grateful" when he forgave her. Caleb's sudden fits of anger soon became a permanent feature of their relationship, as did the heavy drinking he managed to keep hidden during their courtship. The author also discovered that Caleb had cheated on her with three women while they had been dating, but only after they had married. As with all of her husband's other transgressions, she accepted his tearful apologies as proof that he would change. Sundberg became depressed enough that she sought out counseling. The therapist was able to name the destructive behaviors in her marriage for what they were: domestic violence. Nevertheless, the cycle of brutality and tenderness continued. Eventually, the author and her husband moved to West Virginia. There, the author began a graduate program and found the success Caleb did not have with his own writing. Only after an especially savage incident that required police and paramedic assistance was Sundberg finally able to move on from a broken relationship and begin the long process of healing her own life. By turns wrenching and lyrical, Sundberg's book is an unflinching exploration of both domestic violence and one woman's long, often painful evolution from codependence to self-respect.A courageously honest memoir.

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Starred review from May 1, 2018
Sundberg's essay It Will Look Like a Sunset was featured in The Best American Essays, 2015 and is often taught to creative-nonfiction students for its humbling and raw portrayal of the cycles of domestic abuse. This memoir, the author's first book, is a fuller picture of the pain and confusion of her marriage to Caleb, a writer and adjunct professor. The two fell fast and hard, getting married and giving birth within the first year of their partnership. Things just as quickly went wrong, as Caleb asserted his control in increasingly violent ways. Was it her mother's distance, the unrealistic portrayals of intimacy in romance novels, past dating experiences, or something else entirely that led Sundberg to believe she deserved Caleb's twisted love? Sundberg revisits the hollows of Idaho, where she grew up, and the stunted mountains of West Virginia, where she and Caleb lived in turmoil, in order to dissect the relationship for the sake of her own healing. Somehow, through her candid and brave accounts of Caleb's physical attacks, she never vilifies her former husband, painting him instead as the complex and ill man he was. Lyrical and taut, her memoir provides readers with an honest and critical account of partner violence.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)