On April 14th, 1989, Ramon Salcido came home and murdered his wife, Angela, her two sisters, and his mother-in-law.  He took his three young daughters; Sophia (4), Carmina (3), and 22 month old Teresa and drove around for hours eventually taking them to a county dump and slashing their throats one at a time.

Miraculously, more than a day later, the three children’s bodies were discovered and 3-year-old Camina was still alive.

You would think that Carmina had enough trauma to last a life time, but her run of unhappiness continued from there.  Now with no family who could care for her, Carmina is adopted by a highly dysfunctional family that changes her name claiming that “Carmina” had died that day and has now been reborn as someone new.  The bizarre behavior does not end there.  Eventually she winds up at a girls camp for troubled girls which was both mentally and physically damaging. Meanwhile, Carmina’s father is still alive in prison… and he would like to see her…

Oof ta.  You may wonder why this book, now 5 years after being published, I decided to read it now.  Interestingly, I found this audio by narrator.  Xe Sands has an amazing narrative voice and while looking for good audio and coming up with nothing that was catching my attention I tried looking up books by narrators (yup… you can do that).  When I read the synopsis on this book, on a true crime that I had never heard of, I knew I wanted to know more.

My heart breaks for Carmina.  What a devastating life she has led.  This book,written by Carmina, tells the events that surrounded the tragedy in her life starting at a very young age.  With the assistance of friends, relatives, and co-workers to her parents, Carmina is able to piece together what seems to have happened that fateful day that her father killed her entire immediate family.  Will Carmina every know all the answers?  No, but she seem to have a pretty good idea.

The audio, is smooth and the story line if well paced.  I was horrified to listen to what happened to this family.  Recommended.