University of Regina Press     Pre-orders now available

Publication date is November 6, 2021 

It’s the antithesis of why a wedding should be memorable. In 1992, at a sister’s nuptials, Donna Besel’s family members discovered that their father, Jock Tod, had molested their youngest sister.  After this disclosure, the other five sisters admitted their father had assaulted them when they were younger and had been doing so for years. Despite there being enough evidence to charge their father, the lengthy prosecution rocked Besel's family and deeply divided their small rural community.
 
The Unravelling is a brave, riveting telling of the destruction caused by sexual assault, and the physical, psychological, emotional, financial, and legal tolls survivors often shoulder.
 
Donna Besel offers an honest portrayal of the years-long police process from disclosure to prosecution that offers readers greater insight into the challenges victims face and the remarkable strength and resilience required to obtain some measure of justice.

Advance praise for The Unravelling
“Donna Besel is one of the bravest and most honest writers I know. The high quality of her prose provides the reader with safe entry to what is a harrowing but essential read. We owe her much gratitude for having the courage to write it.” —Gerard Beirne, author of In a Time of Drought and Hunger

“In The Unravelling, Donna Besel tells an important story with an unsentimental, fearless voice, of a family riven as much by the original crime as by the slow-turning wheels of justice.” —Denise Chong, author of The Concubine’s Children

“After a childhood of abuse and years of suffering its aftermath, author Donna Besel courageously sets out to free herself and her family members from the suffocating denial and the lies that threaten to crush them all. While family ties are strained beyond endurance, and delays in the twisted court system protect the perpetrator and torture the victims, Besel keeps fighting, wisely draws strength from her love of her children, her friends, and the natural world, and survives to tell this harrowing, heart-breaking story of terrible losses and a lonely, valiant quest for justice in an unjust world.” —Catherine Hunter, author of After Light

“With courage and conviction, Donna Besel details the crushing personal, familial, and social effects of justice denied when she and some of her siblings decide, as adults, to confront and expose their father as an abuser. Both conscientious record and cris de coeur, The Unravelling speaks powerfully for all victims of sexual abuse. In its honest acknowledgement of pain, it also offers pathways to healing and hope.” —Susan Olding, author of Big Reader

“Donna Besel’s battle for acknowledgment of the evils that infected her childhood is illumined in The Unravelling by the sheer strength of her lucid, straightforward, voice. Besel carries us along an eye-opening journey, one of healing and remarkable endurance.” —Harriet Richards, author of Waiting for the Piano Tuner to Die

“A shattering story and an essential one, told with consummate honesty and courage.” —Joan Thomas, Author of Five Wives