Chapters Bookstore Welcomes Christa Jan Ryan
PITTSFIELD, Mass. - Chapters Bookstore is pleased to welcome Christa Jan Ryan, author Silent Screams from the Hamptons to the event space on Saturday January 24, at 2PM.Christa Jan Ryan’s Silent Screams from the Hamptons is a story of addiction, co-dependency, violence, and ultimately transformation by a landscape designer for the rich and famous in their celebrated playground, the Hamptons. With searing honesty and affirming sense of humor, Ryan’s memoir is a personal journey of self-discovery and spiritual rebirth.
As a young girl Ryan shakes her fist at the skies and yells, “What good can come from all of this chaos!” Life is bedlam in the Ryan household. The youngest of six children, including triplet sisters diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy, Ryan lives in a state of perpetual distress created by the high voltage emotional turbulence in her home. Escalating occurrences of her parents’ violent arguments, car accidents, and suicide attempts are the result of their addictions to alcohol and pills. By adolescence, Ryan has followed their example and is drinking, drugging, and overdosing on Valium in order to tolerate the heartache of her existence. Her saving grace is a deep and abiding love of nature and the ‘great outdoors’.
She flees her childhood memories and lands in the stylish Hamptons, where her love of nature meets the perfect career in landscaping for the rich and famous. Ryan finds her soul mate in Jacob, and they become partners in a flourishing business amidst the high jinx and unusual cast of characters to be found in the wealthy enclaves of eastern Long Island. Ryan and Jacob work hard and party harder in the pursuit of money, sex, and good times.
When Jacob proposes marriage, Ryan ignores the inner alarm signals and they celebrate the moment with a bottle of champagne. Her hesitation is the result of a dark secret that has been hidden from everyone: Jacob beats her bloody! But this reality is obscured by the memories of her father’s violence against her mother. Ryan marries her abuser and the shadow of her improbable family of origin haunts her for years. At her mother’s death bed, she holds the hand of the woman who endured ‘the good, the bad, and the always crazy,” and is overwhelmed with the truth – she is living her mother’s life. Ryan finally acknowledges the emptiness of her own existence.
Ryan confronts her alcoholism and co-dependency. As the haze of alcohol lifts, she wakes up to the physical abuse she has allowed in her relationship. Her journey to recovery begins in earnest once she finds the courage to break the chains with the wreckage of the past.
Silent Screams from the Hamptons invites the reader along on the author’s tumultuous but hopeful journey of enlightenment, set in an entertaining backdrop of millionaire clients and their lives of privilege.
