Stained

Sarah has lived all her seventeen years with a rather large port-wine stain on her face. Now, when she is finally to begin treatments to erase it, her father’s business has been ruined by an embezzler. They don’t have the money for the treatments. She is devastated. She really believed she could be normal, that the bullying and meanness could be gone from her life. She can barely get through the day, but after school faces the worst bullying incident she’s ever faced. Her best friend turns against her and joins the bullies. When Nick, a really amazing guy who is one of her few friends, offers to walk her home, she kind of blows him off. Brian, a handsome young guy who works for Sarah’s father, offers her a ride home. She refuses, but he drags her into his car and ties her up. Her life becomes hell and makes her earlier problems look like nothing. It will take all her strength and will to survive, and that may not be enough.

Cheryl Rainfield has written a dark, edgy, realistic fiction that plumbs the depths of human evil and, at the same time, depicts what really defines heroes.