Roy Rogers Saved My Life

"Roy Rogers Saved My Life" presents the full life of a modern American woman who overcame the bitter legacy of horrific childhood sexual abuse, as well as sexual assaults when she served in the military. Child of post-WWII Levittown (the archetypal American suburb), teacher in Japan, commander in the U.S. Navy, instructor at West Point, mother (by giving birth and by adopting), horse trainer, professional photographer, and published novelist, Ainslie suffered terrible childhood abuse at the hands of her father, a professor of philosophy, morals, and ethics, at Barnard College. Years later, the dissociated memories of this traumatic abuse—abuse visited on her brothers, too—came flooding back to threaten her own marriage and even her life. Through therapy, loving support, animals—particularly horses--and the strength of her own will, she became someone who can say, through self-reflection, "Roy Rogers saved my life," because he did, and this memoir explains exactly how that happened, and how Ainslie came, at last, to understand the course of her entire life. With humor, dramatic dialogue, and honesty, "Roy Rogers Saved My Life" braids together her seemingly separate experiences into one compelling and interconnected narrative of pain, struggle, hope, perseverance, and salvation.