Dear Sister: A Memoir of Secrets, Survival, and Unbreakable Bonds

In this "incendiary" memoir, a woman fights the criminal justice system to release her incarcerated sister after she kills her longtime abuser (Publishers Weekly).

In September 2017, a knock on the door upends Michelle Horton’s life: she learns that her sister has just shot her partner and is now in jail. Stunned, Michelle rearranges her life to raise Nikki's two young children alongside her own son.

During the investigation that follows, Michelle is shocked to learn that Nikki had been hiding horrific abuse for years. Michelle launches a fight to bring Nikki home, squaring off against a criminal justice system designed to punish the entire family.

Since Dear Sister’s original publication, Michelle’s fight—alongside a tireless network of supporters—has resulted in Nikki’s release from prison.

With a new chapter, an update from Nikki, and never-before-seen photographs documenting the homecoming, this edition provides a touching new conclusion to a profound, intimate story of resilience and the unbreakable bond of family.

Dear Sister: A Memoir of Secrets, Survival, and Unbreakable Bonds

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Available for Pre-Order. This item will be released on January 28, 2025

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538757161
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	01/28/2025
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	725,035
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Michelle Horton is a writer and advocate living in New York's Hudson Valley with her son, nephew, and niece. Through the Nicole Addimando Community Defense Committee, she continues to speak out for her sister and the countless other victims of domestic violence criminalized for their acts of survival.

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Editorial Reviews

"Incendiary...a powerful testament to the tenacity of sisterly bonds, a scathing indictment of the legal landscape for abused women, and a wrenching exploration of the shame that allows abuse to remain hidden. This is difficult to forget.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Essential… this strong narrative points to the realities of the United States’ criminal justice system and how it can fail the most vulnerable.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“Unflinching, vulnerable and bold… a story of family resilience, infinite love, friends, and communities …It’s a story you won’t forget. It is a story that matters because it’s more than Nikki’s story.”
—The New York Journal of Books

“Dear Sister stands alongside both Bowdler’s memoir Is Rape a Crime?and Chanel Miller’s bestselling 2019 Know My Name. It is a testament to Horton’s command as a writer that we do not look away. ”—Southern Review of Books

“This deeply felt and beautifully written book—this tale of tragedy and love, cruelty and community—will stay with me long after Nikki comes home and these two amazing sisters and their children can heal. It will stay with me, inspire me, and fuel my commitment to women, because as little Ben says at the end of the book, “It’s not over until we help all the other mommies who defended themselves get free.”
—Elizabeth Lesser, Cofounder of Omega Institute and author of New York Times bestseller Broken Open

“A gripping account of one woman’s ongoing journey through hell—the inferno of an abusive relationship that ended with a bullet; the Hades of a legal system more determined to punish than to understand; and the parallel torment for those who love her, fight for her, and admirably endure.”
—Scott Turow, New York Times bestselling author of Presumed Innocent

"The sheer scale of what Michelle Horton has done — in this book, in her life, in telling her sister’s story and her own, in her very survival — will leave you awestruck. I didn’t read this book, I swallowed it. It will make you feel despair, rage, horror, and ultimately reverence and adoration. Hopefully, it will make you stand up and take notice of all we get wrong with survivors like Nikki Addimando. I don’t think anyone will read this book and not want to take to the streets and demand we do better. I know I’ll be out there. In a word, this book is miraculous.”—Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises and Women We Buried, Women We Burned

“The most difficult circumstances have the power to break open our hearts and bring our spirit fully alive. In this compelling, intimate and beautifully written memoir, we touch on the true meaning of healing and grace.”
—Tara Brach, internationally bestselling author of Radical Acceptance

"A devastating and heart-breaking account which sheds light on all of the secrets, the silences, the unnecessary opprobrium, and the injustice that still surround battered women in our society today." —Sheila Kohler, author of Once We Were Sisters

“A searing read. The next frontier in preventing abuse against women is shining a spotlight on the cruelty and ignorance with which our courts treat victims of abuse, particularly those who defend themselves against violent men. Dear Sister is an important and painful story, beautifully told.”
—Leslie Morgan Steiner, New York Times bestselling author of Crazy Love

From the Publisher

★ 10/16/2023
Horton’s incendiary debut catalogs her efforts to get her sister released from prison. In 2017, Horton was stunned to learn that her younger sibling, Nikki Addimando, had been arrested by police in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., for fatally shooting her boyfriend, Chris Grover, with his own gun. During a phone call with Horton following the arrest, Addimando admitted to the killing, claiming Grover had brandished the firearm and threatened to kill her first. She also revealed to Horton that Grover had been brutally abusing her for years, including while she was pregnant with their daughter, Faye. Despite ample evidence of Grover’s abuse, Addimando was convicted of second-degree murder in 2019 and sentenced to 19 years in prison (reduced to 7.5 years in 2021 under the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act). Horton recounts her desperate attempts to convince the prosecutor not to pursue the case and the toll it took on her own son, Noah, when she assumed responsibility for Addimando’s two children. With Addimando still behind bars, Horton’s narrative offers little comfort, but it serves as a powerful testament to the tenacity of sisterly bonds, a scathing indictment of the legal landscape for abused women, and a wrenching exploration of the shame that allows abuse to remain hidden. This is difficult to forget. Agent: Eve MacSweeney, Calligraph. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 01/01/2024
Abuse perpetuated over several years led Nikki Addimando to kill her partner in self-defense in 2017. It sent her and her family into a nightmarish spiral of pain, fear, and despair as they traversed and often fought the criminal justice system. Horton, Nikki's sister, was a newly divorced single mother at the time. She soon became a full-time parental figure/caregiver to her sister's two small children and the leader in the fight for justice for her sister and other domestic violence victims. In this raw, emotionally charged memoir that reads like a suspense novel, Horton takes readers through her discoveries of the systemic abuse her sister suffered since childhood, at the hands of several people. Horton recounts feeling helpless and anguished in not knowing the truth. The sisters' loving bond shines through the pain in this book, bringing much needed light to an otherwise heavy story. VERDICT An essential purchase. Through countless extensions of jail time without a bail hearing, changes in attorneys, depositions, and heartbreaking jail visits, this strong narrative points to the realities of the United States' criminal justice system and how it can fail the most vulnerable.—Katy Duperry

Library Journal

2023-11-18
A scarifying story of domestic abuse, murder, and justice gone awry.
The sister of the title is Horton’s own, Nikki, a young woman whose difficult life got incalculably worse when her boyfriend forced her to participate in pornography that involved rape and battery—and who then beat and tortured her himself. Although a police officer tracked these videos on porn sites and recommended prosecution, “Nikki…was embarrassed and scared of the repercussions,” as Horton writes of her sister. She was also afraid for her safety. The consequences became far more severe when, at the breaking point, Nikki shot her boyfriend dead and was immediately charged with homicide. Brought to trial, Nikki had perfect-storm misfortunes: Her defense was unprepared and, by Horton’s account, barely competent, while for reasons of her own, the prosecutor was determined to paint a portrait of Nikki as a conniver who had engineered a murder, “a manipulative liar who faked abuse allegations and murdered [him] in his sleep, when he was defenseless.” In fact, they learned that the boyfriend was planning to murder Nikki and then kill himself. The prosecutor was successful, and in the course of the cascading results that followed—and that beggar belief in their patent injustice—Nikki was sentenced to a term that, even when procedural errors were unveiled under appeal, was reduced from possible life imprisonment to just a few years—“a monumental victory,” if one that still presumed Nikki as the guilty party. Horton is hardly dispassionate in her presentation, but she is admirably evenhanded in showing the devastation that the events wrought on the children and extended families involved on all sides—all of whom, Horton affectingly writes, have shared in the trauma of crime and punishment.
A troubling narrative that calls for judicial reform—and more judicial accountability—to protect those who suffer abuse.

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