"My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon."<BR>Shame begins as the story of a twelve-year-old girl, but it is also about the storyteller, a mature woman, the author herself. The violent moment lives inside her. The trauma comes at a moment when she is still so close to her mother and father that the threatened act of violence is incomprehensible. It cuts through her like an axe.<BR>Over time, the memory cools until it is just a snapshot she carries in her purse, unchanging even after years have passed and the twelve-year-old girl has grown into an orgasmic woman and a writer. Years later the cut is still there, but her whole being has grown around it like a tree that has been struck by lightning and survived.