TRAPPED. I AM
NOT WHO I AM.
The protagonist’s powerful and thought-provoking life story is a perfect tale of how ordeals can strengthen a person’s character, leading to total transformation and redemption. Read the encouraging narrative of love and hate, ugliness and beauty, heartache and happiness, the greatest heights and lows of life. Could being born the wrong gender become a real killer? What will happen if you, while being a woman, are attracted to women only? Can you envision the misery of existence being torn apart between your own mind and body? Can you imagine the pain inflicted on you by your own parents, especially in the time of childhood? How would you feel losing a great love that, like a snowdrop, bloomed despite all odds between two young women? What would you do if you accidentally opened a door, which was a gateway to hell? Nobody goes through life without pain, but how would you react to being caught in a vicious circle when things go from bad to worse? Could you appreciate the preciousness of life while being trapped in a constant nightmare? Can you be gentle to other people when feeling brutally broken? Can you envision you experienced the world being full of cruelty, violence, anguish, betrayal, and duplicity but still believe that there is another side of it, which is glorious, optimistic, cherished, fascinating, and precious? Which side would you choose? Can you picture serving jail time if you committed no crime? How would you survive the sudden death of the most significant person in your life?
Angela’s life story is a perfect tale of ordeals strengthening her character, leading to total transformation and redemption.
MARINA RAY BIO
I was born and lived in the beautiful city, St. Petersburg, Russia. I have firsthand experience living under a communist regime. In the 1980s, Communist party leader Gorbachev started a political movement, called ‘’perestroika,’’ the literal meaning being ‘’restructuring.’’ He called for reformations within the communist party and economic system. Those reforms brought chaos in the country by shaking and changing established laws and policies. During the period of the Communist empire collapsing, Russia plunged into a period of unprecedented crime never seen in its history. Explosions and gunshots were part of life. Bandits organized into gangs; they forced every business owner to pay a portion of their income, they controlled different parts of the city, and they knew where businesses were located. Criminals abducted and tortured disobedient entrepreneurs or the members of their families. If that did not convey the lesson, they would kill. My husband and I were business owners.