Have You Seen These Children?: A Memoir

Description

After being abducted from the Philippines and brought to the US by their alcoholic American father in 1959, four young children fight to survive for four long years. Hauled from state to state, hungry and afraid, they endure what they have to in hopes of getting back to their mother. Individually, they are victims; together, they are warriors.

Dr. Veronica Slaughter was born in the Philippines to an American father and a Filipino mother in 1951. At eight, she, along with her siblings, were kidnapped by their father and brought to the United States. In spite of her turbulent childhood, she was able to achieve the American Dream through her resilience and determination. In 2017, she retired from her thirty-five-year chiropractic practice in California and moved to the beautiful island of Maui, where she continues to live with her many animals. She has one son; he lives in Northern California, and is the love of her life.

"Slaughter writes with passion, gracefully offering the delicate details of her parents' courtship and the erosion of her own relationship with her father as well as relating the fear and confusion that she and her siblings felt. Her narrative dexterity will hook readers immediately.....A poignant account of traumatic childhood memories, resilience, and survival." -KIRKUS REVIEWS "A harrowing account of the life-long consequences victims of parental abductions experience-months, years, even decades after they are reunited with the left-behind parent. The author gives a fi rst-person perspective of what it's like to be robbed of the most basic need: access to one's mother." ? -?LIZBETH MEREDITH, author of? Pieces of Me: Rescuing My Kidnapped Daughters "Veronica Slaughter's words are spellbinding and paint a vivid picture every step of the way throughout her journey. Once you start her book, I dare you to put it down before the end. This is a story of survival, love, and resilience. Reading it, you will laugh and cry, and afterward, you won't be able to get it out of your head." -?TAMMY L. COIA, president and founder of TLC Writing Retreats