After Daddy Died: Portrait of a Mad Man
Dr. Naomi Roberson

Reviewed by Ashley Merrill

That aside, this book was based on the author’s horrific childhood.  She was the victim of severe abuse from her father, mother, and siblings.  She was raped, molested, the victim of incest, beaten, verbally bashed, and almost murdered.  This book is her account of what happened to her and her siblings under her father’s abuse.  She tells her story in small paragraphs.  One paragraph will be a short account of one of her sisters being raped, then the next paragraph will jump ten years and be about her brother murdering someone, then go back three years and be about her mother being beaten. There is no clear time line.

Towards the end of the book she shares with us forty principles that she tries to live by now that she is a born again Christian and has forgiven everyone for what has happened to her. One of the things she tries to live by is to trust no one.  In this story she talks about being able to move on and how she is finally over her traumatic childhood, but in the next breath she says that she lives by the rule to trust no one.  I don’t think she is over these events as much as she leads on.  She tells us that she actually tries to live by eighty-six principles, but that if you want to know them all you can look in the back of the book and see her contact information and send her money for them. I don’t agree with this. She is writing an account of her life and is graciously sharing it with people, but then is trying to make money off of random tid bits.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that it took a lot of courage to write what she wrote, and I’m sure writing this helped in her healing process, but I did not like the style in which this was written.  As I stated above, she throws so many things at you in such a short period of time that it causes your body to go through all types of emotions to the point where you are exhausted and you want to put the book down.  I think Naomi Roberson could have benefited by taking more time to outline the book and set things up in a better order and to add some filler in with all of the random tragic abuse facts she and her family faced. 

This is a good book for anyone to read who gets inspiration out of survivor stories.  The way this book was put together is a bit unorganized and could use a lot of work with the mechanics of it, but the story is a good one, and gives us all the message that regardless of what we are faced to endure, you can always come out the winner.