Reflections of Love and Loathing

About the Book

On a hot June day, Liliana, a brilliant, young woman of Native American, Hispanic and Anglo-Saxon heritage is irresistibly drawn to a cowboy despondently leaning on his truck on the side of the highway as she drives home to Grants. "Reflections of Love and Loathing" takes place in New Mexico, where Liliana loses her loving parents when she is five. Secret resources enable her abusive, alcoholic grandmother, Carla, to keep her; so Liliana is forced to live with the persistent stalking of a serial pedophile, Joe, who is her great-grandfather. When Terry sees her recklessly cross the highway to come to his aid, he begins the wild ride into Liliana's life. After meeting Carla and Joe, he has his doubts about being with Liliana, but soon he realizes that love binds him to her. After driving Terry to his destination in Texas, Liliana learns that Carla has accused her of killing Joe and flees in panic. She wakes to find herself broken and alone; her truck wrecked in a deep arroyo. Only her love for Terry gives her the strength to fight for survival in the flashflood that threatens to finish her off and only Terry's mysterious link to her allows him to find and rescue her. While she lies broken in the hospital, Terry learns of the perversions and misuse of power that maintained multigenerational sexual abuse that destroyed the lives of three generations of women and dominated Liliana's life with Carla. Then begins Liliana's true challenge. As her body heals, she will have to rise above the emotional damage caused by Carla and the nightmare mirror image of Joe that tempts her to drive Terry away rather than face her fears and believe that she is worthy of Terry's love. The most difficult challenge of all.

About the Author

Although Mary R. Gutierrez has written short stories and books most of her life, this is the first book she has published. She is a retired Family Practice Physician, who was born and mostly raised in New Mexico and now lives in Denver, Colorado. She completed a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology with honors and graduated from the University of New Mexico Medical School. She then moved to Massachusetts to complete her residency in Family Practice, taught there for two years then moved to Colorado. Her studies and practice focused on women's rights, family dynamics, sexual abuse, domestic violence and caring for underserved populations, homeless families, immigrants, and addicts. Through the years she has learned there is no "type" of person who abuses and abusers are the best at denying the damage they do. Families are always complex, but the interactions of abused, or the mix of abused and not abused children, is nearly an impossible tangle. She married and divorced young, then worked her way through college. After returning to the Southwest, she worked with the underserved at Denver Community Health Clinic until physically incapacitated to work by Fibromyalgia. A sexual abuse survivor herself, depression complicated her illness. She is a fan of literary books that explore families as well as the more abstract approach to human dynamics in the fantasy and science fiction genres. Other interests include painting in watercolor and pastels, and learning to sing and play the guitar. Her living companions are her cats, a chubby female, shorthair tortie rescue, and a red, short-haired tabby male, a delightful fellow that adopted her.