" If she had known then the score and depth of the tragedy that was to come, Mum might have borne the insults of her childhood with more fortitude, but the pathos and the gift of life is that we cannot know which will be our defining heartbreak, or our most victorious joy. And so for a few years from around the time Mum turned three, an accumulation of what she considered truly dreadful events occurred. And because they were the first real insults of her so-far small life, they remain vivid and searing for her even now. "

― Alexandra Fuller , Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness