When April finally opens the door to the past, she comes face to face with her guilt. Inspired by true events, Supreme Sacrifice takes you on a journey spanning three decades, which begins in a steel mill town in the Midwest during the height of unionism in the 1960s. April is the pride and joy of her father, Josef Straka, a first generation American, once a successful businessman at the top of his game, whose alcoholism soon brought the family to the depths of despair. April’s spiritual journey begins when her father dies in a mysterious car crash. Every night she is plagued with a dark cloud of haunting, recurring nightmares. Her days aren’t much better living in this blue-collar, steel city shrouded in post-industrial gloom and overcast skies. Married young, she struggles to complete her academic studies, which launch her into the business world. She and her husband decide to move to the South. Just when she thought she had left her past behind forever, nightmares return coincidentally on the heels of a stormy, complicated relationship with a new friend. April is introduced to new spiritual tools and friends who help pull her back from the edge and into an obsessive search for the answers to her father’s accident. Storm clouds slowly begin to part when she learns how to tap the power and strength from within by changing how she sees her past, forgiving herself and others. Malie spins a compelling story of a young woman’s journey to self-discovery, and the transformation of April’s awakening and ultimate redemption to accomplish her dreams.

How many times she spent nights kneeling quietly on a little maple, padded, three-legged stool beneath the side window in her bedroom, looking across the street at the Croquet Court, dreaming about studying hard and becoming a doctor some day. She loved to learn and was even voted the “Most Academic” in her graduating class. Staring at the corner streetlight she would lose herself fantasizing how much better life would be far away from here. She wanted to be where the skies were clear and the sun always shining. She thought that once she walked away from her old life, she would never come back. She paced and checked the wall clock imagining how it was to want to be anywhere else in the world, but on that little padded stool seeing those headlights creeping slowly down the street again, hiding under the covers, wishing her father would never arrive; fantasizing what life would be like if he never took another drink. If there was a God, why wasn’t he doing something to help her? She always felt so alone and hopeless like she was the only one in the world this was happening to.

RITA MALIE is the award-winning author of Goodbye America, a memoir of her mother’s childhood. The legacy of growing up in an alcoholic home inspired her to write Supreme Sacrifice to help others overcome and prevent ghosts of the past to influence the present and future. She lives in Florida with her husband and children.