conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is a description for a book titled April Shadows about Attic, Dollanganger, Christophers with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author novels have been a bestselling phenomenon since the publication of Flowers in the Attic , first in the renowned Dollanganger series, which includes Petals on the Wind , If There Be Thorns , Seeds of Yesterday , and Garden of Shadows. The family saga continues with Christophers Diary: Secrets of Foxworth , Christophers Diary: Echoes of Dollanganger , and Secret Brother , and will continue with Beneath the Attic next fall as part of the fortieth anniversary celebration. There are now more than seventy the author novels, which have sold over 106 million copies worldwide and have been translated into twenty-five foreign languages. Join the conversation about the world of the author at Facebook.com/OfficialVCthe author.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: April Shadows
  About six months or so after my thirteenth birthday, my daddy changed into a monster. It was truly as if he woke up one morning with someone else in his body. We didn't take note of the actual day, because we all thought he was just in a bad mood, and everyone, especially someone who worked as hard as he did, deserved the right to have what Mama calls "a bad hair day." If my sister, Brenda, had one or Mama had one, or even I had one, the best advice was to steer clear, nod, walk away, or change the subject. The only thing was, we couldn't do any of that to Daddy. He had a way of focusing his eyes like tiny laser beams, and he always demanded complete attention. He wasn't to be ignored, and attempting to change the subject with him was like trying to step out of a speeding automobile.
  Anyway, about this time, he stopped doing any fun things with us and started complaining daily about everything in sight. He never seemed to be able to get out of a bad mood or throw off this shroud of grouchiness. According to him, neither my older sister, Brenda, nor I could ever do anything right anymore, whether it was the way we made our beds, cleaned up our rooms, or helped Mama with her house chores. Mama started to call him Mr. Hyde from the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. No matter how she protested, it didn't seem to bother him, which disappointed and surprised my sister and me. Up until then, when Mama complained about something Daddy did, especially in relation to us, he softened. He would rather walk barefoot over hot coals than see her unhappy. She was always our savior, but now she was like a fairy godmother who had lost her powers and her wings. She fell back to earth to wallow in the real world with the two of us.
  It became worse than that for her, however. Eventually, Mama cried a lot over Daddy's new ways and words when she thought we weren't looking. As a result of all this, the three of us changed. Brenda became Miss Angry Face, leaving her smile outside the front door whenever she came home from after-school activities, and I felt too numb and frightened most of the time, never knowing when Daddy would explode with another burst of complaints. That was the year Daddy started to criticize my weight, too. He looked at me with such displeasure in his eyes that I felt my insides twist, turn, and shrivel. I tried to turn away, but then came his words, which were like tiny knives poking at my heart.
  It got so I was afraid to put my fork into anything on my plate. My hand actually shook, and my stomach tightened until I could barely breathe. A few times, I actually threw up everything I had eaten. Mama got very angry at him then. She widened her eyes and stretched her lips so thin they turned white, but even that didn't stop him. Brenda protested on my behalf, and when she did, Daddy turned his anger and criticism on her by saying, "What kind of a big sister are you? You should be on her back more than anyone and especially more than me. You know what it means to be physically fit and how being overweight can cause so many health problems."
  Brenda was an excellent athlete. At five-foot-eleven in her junior year, she was the star of the girls' varsity basketball team and the girls' volleyball team. She had already broken all the school's scoring records. Her picture was almost always in the weekend paper's sports pages. Scouts had come from colleges to watch her play. There was talk that she might have an opportunity to play for the United States volleyball team in the Olympics. Other fathers attended the games and sat watching with proud smiles on their faces. About the time Daddy became our own Mr. Hyde, he stopped going altogether and then started to ridicule Brenda by telling her things like, "You're not going to be a professional athlete. Why waste your time?" He told her he thought her grades could be higher, even though she ran a good B+ average with all her extracurricular activities.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is another paragraph?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Out of the corner of my eye, I saw young men wave after us with disgust, clearly saying it was a waste of time to look, to call, even to try to catch Celia's attention. They knew. They knew what I had refused to know. Now, everything I saw and every word I heard reconfirmed the truth building inside me. This isn't my sister's roommate; this is my sister's lover. The constant question swirling around in my mind was, where did I belong in all this?
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: There were two windows in the bedroom that had once been Mrs. Westington's daughter's bedroom. They looked out on the east end of the house, and when I gazed out of them now, I saw the back of the motor home and my car where Trevor had parked them. I could understand selling the vehicle and most of Uncle Palaver's things, but I decided I didn't want to see his magic equipment sold, and I especially didn't want to see the Destiny doll taken away. I had no idea now what I would do with it all, but I made up my mind to make that a requirement of my remaining here in Mrs. Westington's home. I saw no reason why she would be opposed.
  As darkness thickened and the stars began to brighten, I thought about the journey I had taken to arrive at this place. Was everyone's life as convoluted? Did everyone travel through a similar kind of maze, where each turn caused us to go in one direction or another? It seemed chaotic to me, until I thought about the way each event determined the next. Maybe there was a pattern. Maybe Uncle Palaver's doll was aptly named, and we were all in the hands of Destiny, one way or another.
  Perhaps it had. Perhaps Echo had signed a prayer to God asking for someone like me to be brought to her doorstep. Who was I to question anything anymore, whether it be Peter Smoke's medicine wheel, Uncle Palaver's obsession for a lost love, or Mrs. Westington's confidence in a reason for everything?
  So much about our lives is illusion, I thought. Daddy had tried to create one to replace his tragic reality for us. Brenda had accepted one with Celia that became a bubble and burst. And I had run off pursuing my own shadows and wishful thinking. I quickly understood that Uncle Palaver was simply drawing from that well of fantasy and serving it back to his audiences.
  One way or another, we all arrive here, I thought. We all stop and watch the darkness swallow up the shadows and the illusions. Then we turn to ourselves and hope to find the strength to look into the face of reality and go on. That's what Mrs. Westington was doing or trying to do. She had asked me to join hands with her.