A Map to the Stars

By Ashley Hutchison

A portrait of a stolen childhood.

 

Once upon a time, Avery lived in a place filled with family, magic, and love. It ended when her mother came for her. Ripped from the only home she ever knew, young Avery endures horrific exploitation, familial separation, and a childhood without the promise of a happily ever after.

 

Part prose, part poetry - all primal scream -  A Map to the Stars explores the acerbic betrayal of family, unthinkable abuse, and the search for what is left behind - if anything at all - amongst the stars.  Ashley Hutchison pulls no punches in this creative nonfiction memoir of her childhood.

Content Warning: Language, Child Neglect, Child Abuse, Abandonment

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lost Boys Press
• Release date: Oct 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781735676913

Book preview

MapsBW

Ashley Hutchison

Copyright © 2020 Ashley Hutchison

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-7356769-0-6

First Print Edition – October 31st, 2020

Cover Art and Illustrations by:

Kneeley Pearson

Printed By:

Lost Boys Press

www.lostboyspress.com

Dedicated to the those who have endured.

REVELATIONS, before the first

A Map to the Stars isn’t a memoir like you’ve experienced before. 

The structure is just as much part of the narrative experience as the words on the page. This sacred story is a stirring thing and ignores grammatical systems at times. When Avery unravels, the book follows suit.  

Also, please know this memoir was written to be a movement, so it is best experienced in a single sitting. Find a comfortable chair and prepare yourself for an emotional journey. 

In the Beginning...

(Age: 0-5)

There was a house. A house on a hill overlooking a church. A house on a hill with willow trees planted just for her. A house on a hill with a wooden swing made just for her. A grey house on a hill overlooking a church. It was grey on the outside, but not on the inside. Inside was magic. Inside was love.

The inside was occupied by furniture, none of which matched. The inside was occupied by hard carpet and strange floors that weren’t level. The inside was occupied by people.

Family.

Her family.

A little girl, her grandmother, her grandfather, and her aunt. Family. Magic, and love, and family. At one time the little girl’s mother was there with them, but she had gone away. She was with a husband and another little girl. Her sister, they called her. The little girl often wondered why her family wasn’t her mother and her new husband and her new little girl. But being with her family at the grey house on the hill overlooking the church with the willow trees planted just for her and a wooden swing made just for her was perfect.

Anytime she remembered it as she grew up, she would think of climbing into the sink to watch her aunt outside from the window. She would throw bread over the fence in the backyard for the birds. Then she would come back inside and the two would watch as the birds flew in. They would try to name each kind.

She would remember the age of her grandfather’s hands. He called her precious jewel and sugarplum. She would remember her grandmother searching for her all over the house when they played hide-and-seek. She would remember it all bathed in the yellow and orange hues of sunset.

It would end. The little girl named Avery would have to leave this place of magic, and love, and family. Her mother would come for her. It would be the only time in Avery’s life that she came for her.

There was a grey house on the hill overlooking the church with willow trees planted just for her and a wooden swing made just for her, and she never saw it again.

The Mother

I was hers. I was hers and she was mine and for such a tragically brief time we belonged to one another completely. We were held together by the force of each other's gravity, so heavily influenced by the passing moods we exhibited. All things for us began and ended with the other. She was Alpha and I, Omega. And because we were so tied it was all the more lamentable when our cord of communion was broken.

She and he joined. She and he joined, coupled, and from their union she bore him another. This new one was entirely different, red and erupting, with violence flowing about her surface. No longer was I the place where the sun rose and set in her vision, and our sacred, perfect bond was invaded. These intruders interrupted our united gravity so, and I saw her own weakening under theirs. Both of them dominant, demanding, and oppressive. In her diminished state, I watched as her core changed. What was once a center of soft, warm ivory, became that of cracked, gray iron. The change in her core caused a poison