Teressa Shelton shows courage and determination as she bares her family’s darkest secrets in her debut memoir, The Sergeant’s Daughter. Beginning with a disturbing anecdote about her father’s sadistic joy of hurting animals as a child, Shelton takes us moment by harrowing moment as she describes her experience growing up with an abusive father and a neglectful mother.
Jon Harmon wasn’t very smart, but he was good with women. At the young age of 19, he walks into Lorraine Wells’ life, wife of Dee Wells, and mother to young Michael and Debbie, subsequently becoming the cause of her divorce and of the trainwreck of events that will comprise the Harmon family life. Lorraine and Jon soon get married and begin a life together, but Jon is quick to inform Lorraine that he cannot be the father of a boy. Lorraine, always ready to please him, sends her son to live with his father in Texas, where they decide to let the boy grow up believing his mother died in an accident, while she keeps Debbie.
So their picture-perfect family gets its start, with Shelton and her younger sister, Karen, soon joining in. Behind the scenes though, Jon is inherently unhappy, critical, and miserable. At an age where most little girls are focused on becoming princesses, Shelton has been forced, by the circumstances of her life, to understand that her father is subject to mood swings. The smallest of things can set him off, even something as insignificant as not sitting up straight can be reason enough to bring on a merciless whipping. The only way Jon knows how to express this insurmountable displeasure with life is through violence. He seeks to correct any and every wrong by punishing his daughters. If one so much as puts a toe out of line, they all have to pay for it.
Shelton and her sisters bear this burden in silence, never once discussing it with anyone outside of their home. Their mother lives in a bubble, in which she tells herself the story according to how she’d like to hear it. She sees Jon as a good father and husband because he provides for his family, setting the bar as low as possible for him. She never once stands up to Jon, never once fights for her daughters, and always does what she has to in order to keep Jon happy and in her bed every night.
As Shelton and her sisters grow up, they find ways to cope and escape, often to the homes of friends or their grandparents. With age, they begin to realize the unfairness and the calamity of life their parents have shaped for them. Acts of rebellion intensify among the girls, as hidden truths begin to come to light, and each begins to find her own way out of the black hole of doom that forms whenever they come in close proximity to their parents.
The Sergeant’s Daughter is an easy but heavy read. Though its bulk is filled with short chapters and a straightforward narrative, Sergeant and Mrs. Harmon’s injustice and ignorance are revolting and mind-boggling. Shelton never minces words when describing the whippings her father would give them, the time he literally abandoned her on the side of the road for her mother to find — a punishment inflicted simply because Jon hated when Shelton’s legs began to shake — or the time he made Karen eat a vomit-covered potato. It’s the kind of narrative that must be digested in pieces as the weight of its infuriating reality can gain momentum inside the reader. Persons easily triggered by stories of abuse should approach this novel with caution.
Though laden with themes of abuse, neglect, and molestation, The Sergeant’s Daughter consumes the reader’s attention as we flip page after page hoping for the karmic retribution that we all know must eventually come.
Readers everywhere will commend Shelton for her honesty and her perseverance. Shelton sheds some much-needed light and helps evoke empathy on an all too common issue resurging, not just in the homes of those living with family members in the military but everywhere. Although brutal and distressing, one can only hope The Sergeant’s Daughter can help encourage other victims of abuse to find the strength to speak up.