I'm sorry but the book did not really work for me. I DNF'ed it. I wasn’t able to connect with any of the many characters in the book and I found myself putting down the book a lot because it was never really catching my attention.

Trail of Broken Wings is a semi-autobiographical novel about three daughters who were abused by their father throughout their childhood. They have all moved on and created successful lives for themselves, but when their father suddenly falls into a coma, all three girls are drawn back to their childhood home to support their mother and make peace with their feelings towards their father.

The youngest daughter, Sonya, has been estranged from her Indian-American family for many years, travelling around the world as a photographer. Her oldest sister, Marin, is a successful career woman with a stable marriage and a teenage daughter who may be repeating Marin’s own history. The middle sibling, Tricia, also has a seemingly perfect marriage, but she is afraid to have children because of what she witnessed in her own childhood – and her fears are driving away her husband.

Each of the girls have conflicted feelings about whether their father will survive his coma – and as they reconnect with their mother Ranee, they learn about her role in his trauma. Throughout their childhood, they experienced aggression, bullying, and outright cruelty, and they came to feel responsible for the toxic environment surround them. Marin and Sonya were severely beaten, but Tricia was exempt, and the girls never understood why she was given special treatment – until her suppressed memories return, revealing shameful and shocking secrets.

The sisters and their mother tell a heartbreaking story that shows how different people respond to abuse within the same family. The abuse shapes the way they develop throughout the rest of their lives, although some of the sudden personality changes were hard to believe. It was interesting to see the effects of Ranee’s Indian culture on her actions, as she tried to explain why she was unable to stand up to her husband and protect her children.

The novel is built around well-timed plot twists that pop up just when things started to drift, although they were often predictable and one-dimensional. It is an intimate description of child abuse and domestic violence, and even though it often felt emotionally manipulative, it was obviously a tough topic for the author to explore. Unfortunately, the ending seemed contrived and unrealistic, but it was the revelations throughout the novel that kept it interesting.

I received this book from Lake Union Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.