There Was Night and There Was Morning

A searing memoir about growing up in a fiercely loving, abusive rabbinical family in which the author’s father, the charismatic head of a splinter Orthodox religious community, demands unswerving loyalty—and a commitment to guarding terrible secrets.

Sara Sherbill was raised by a father who was both a representative of God and a broken man harboring an intricate set of secrets. Her riveting story explores what happens when a daughter is tasked with keeping those secrets, and the cost of keeping them. It asks: How do we live with suffering? What does it mean to heal? In the face of unspeakable harm, what can be reclaimed? Sherbill’s tale, written with grace and brutal honesty, reveals her struggle to reclaim her identity as a daughter, woman, and now mother. Most of all, it’s a story about learning to live alongside our traumas without letting them consume us—what some might call redemption.