Rebecca, thank you for sharing a difficult and painful period of your life. By offering something so personal, you will help many who are struggling within relationships and need to know they are not alone in not understanding why "it" is not working. Your resilience and determination to persevere and learn from your relationships is to be commended. I applaud your honesty with subjects that many would declare off limits, particularly in the world of evangelical churches. Many people will benefit from reading about your process and seeing that there can be a "happy ending".

Rebecca, I love your extraordinary writing and am moved beyond words by your testimony. To confess so much, to bare your soul to the world as you have done, is an act of courage that no one else I know personally possesses. Thank you for sharing your journal and your difficult, heart-breaking lessons to us all.

It is almost unbelievable how much emotion and turbulence you have been carrying, and the "Looking Back" epilogue was a relief for me to reach. Life always presents challenges - this is why we keep living, after all! - but wisdom and grace (as yours) will prevail.

You told your story with piercing beauty yet truth. Where did you summon the idea to organize the book as you have: snapshots from the marriage, separation, divorce and recovery; arranged in non-chronological but meaningful order like poetry? How lovingly you wrote about your ex-husband, yet how understandably you explained your bewilderment, the affairs, and finally the resolution.

Your life has been a difficult, exacting teacher. The readers of your book will be grateful, loving students!

Rebecca Carroll's candid and moving memoir shows how painfully difficult it can be to find a resolution when love proves to be not enough to sustain a marriage. Not willing to suffer forever in a relationship that lacked true intimacy, Rebecca was also not able to tear herself away easily from the commitment she had made to her husband.

This book will be helpful to someone trying to decide whether to stay or go, or trying to cope with the long recovery time of disentangling oneself from a formerly wholehearted relationship. And it will be of interest to anyone critical of the emotional damage inflicted by some fundamentalist religions.

Some will find it a profound mirror for their own doubts, fears and conflicted longings.

This small, paperback captures the emotional tales of young, African American girls from across the United States. Discussions of self-esteem, identity, racism, prejudice, and relationships permeate throughout Rebecca Carroll's book. Readers of all ages amd races come away with a profound understanding of what it means to be Black and female, but most importantly, the pride and strength that these young women carry within themselves in order to survive in America's society. Young girls of this culture will undoubtedly regard this book as a treasured resource since these humorous, personal and frank stories connect them to a sense of comaraderie, support and confidence. Carroll only reveals fifteen of fifty stories, which leaves you wanting and wondering about the rest.

SUGAR IN THE RAW is an inspiring collection of essays written by 15 African American young women who, as the backcover asserts, "refuse to be ignored."

These girls may share a racial ancestry but their stories are as unique as they are. This thin volume contains essays from young women of all walks of life: from a bisexual homegirl in Portland trying to keep it together to a biracial girl in lily white Vermont coming to terms with who she is, the reader of SUGAR will share in all the girl's excitement, fears and triumphs.

The only drawback is the the book is so short. The editor interviewed over 90 girls from around the country but only 15 are included here. SUGAR can be easily read in one sitting and will leave you wanting more. Hopefully, a SUGAR II is in the works.

All in all, this book would make a great gift for a young woman of any race.

Just a short note to say that I purchased this book for two young women (12 & 14). They received the books as christmas gifts. Yes, they would have preferred clothing or cash, but once they started reading they couldn't put it down.

This is the type of book that initiates conversations, questions and thoughts on some of life's harder issues.