Excerpt from The Unravelling: Incest and the Destruction of a Family by Donna Besel

PROLOGUE

Call me “Incested.” 

  I earned that name. I struggled long and hard to be able to say those words. 

I cannot speak for husbands, children, sisters, brothers, cousins, wives, ancestors, friends,  or any of the hundreds involved; I speak only for myself. I tell this from my vantage point, my version of vision, my fractured reality.

"She's lying. She's always been crazy and angry. What in hell is she trying to do?"

  To that I say - this is my story. I earned it. I will call myself “Incested.”

CHAPTER ONE

August 15, 1992 

This story begins, strangely enough, with a wedding.

As is often the case with incest, it had gone on for years, but the unraveling began when my family gathered for my younger sister's marriage. Even before the bride began to plan the nuptials, family members muttered, mumbled, and tried to think happier thoughts. We knew it needed to come out. I liked to call it the "constipated memory syndrome.”

Three months before the wedding, my brother David had decided to have his daughter christened. He suggested, since we might all be in the same city, we could gather to discuss incest. The time had come. Furtive and terrified, we freaked - we couldn't do this now- we had a wedding to plan, besides, what would the groom's mother think? 

On the previous Christmas, the avalanche had already started. When my brother Robin dropped by for a visit, we had this strained conversation.

"Well, Shannon finally left home. He was still doing it to her. Did you know?"

"I'm not surprised. He did it to me for a long time."

"He did it to you? How come you never told me?"

"You never asked. I hoped he had stopped. We are so dumb."

"Who else?"

"Who knows?"

"What happens now? What can we do?"

"It's gonna be shitty, no matter what."

And then I felt a sinking feeling, like flunking a test, blowing an interview, only one hundred thousand times worse. 

"Let's wait and see. Maybe it will work out. Maybe we won't have to do anything."

But we had come to a ledge, whether we wanted to or not. 

And then ... we stepped off the cliff. Notice I say "We." I am mindful of pronouns, in writing and in speaking. Some of my siblings shared the same thoughts, fears, inklings of disaster. I wasn't on that precipice by myself.

First, some relevant numbers: my family of origin consisted of ten children, five sons and five daughters. I am sixth in birth order. We were raised in poverty, in a rural setting, in a small bush community called West Hawk Lake. My birth mother died of brain cancer at forty-eight, two years after her last child, Tom, was born. I was fourteen. My father remarried just as I turned eighteen, in my final year of high school. After a few years, my stepmother, Joan, adopted a daughter, Shannon, fours years old. 

The arrivals of my brothers and sisters spanned about twenty-five years, in intervals of roughly every two years. Most managed to get educated, get married, and get children. Some managed all three, to greater or lesser success. At the time of the wedding, I was married, with two kids.

In the months prior to the wedding, my siblings silently transmitted the following message - the ceremony must be dealt with, before the incest bomb could be defused. 

Not surprisingly, our family excelled at weddings. This would be our seventh. Wendy, the youngest daughter of our birth mother, deserved to have it done up right. 

I gave the toast to the bride.

"Once upon a time, there was a girl with straight blonde hair, big blue eyes, and wrap-around grin. Her mother had so many children she didn't know what to do ...Whoops! Wrong story! Anyway, this girl seemed so old and so wise that everyone called her "Little Old Lady." When she was around six years old, her mother got sick and died, just before Christmas. The little girl became even older and wiser." 

And so it went, on and on and on.

We raised our glasses, flung jackets on chairs, posed for photos, danced the polka - so boisterous and photogenic. For the moment, we could overlook the old man clutching and fondling the bridesmaids.

Wendy and her new husband Bill drove off into the darkness. Thankfully, they were far enough down the road and across the prairie, before the detonation. After the honeymoon ended, they returned to a changed family, smoldering, grieving, wounded; no semblance of the happy, bright wedding crowd remained.

CHAPTER TWO

While Wendy and Bill headed west, my second oldest sister, Belle, lingered in West Hawk Lake. She had arrived with lots of baggage, physical and other kinds. For four days, she asked questions, revealing glimpses of her own story. She pressed books about "survivors" into reluctant hands. Belle bothered people. She bothered our oldest sister, Jean, once too often. 

Jean chose to enlighten Belle. But she did not talk about improprieties done to her, or any of our sisters. She told Belle about the sexual activity between Belle's adult daughter, Rena, and Belle's husband, Terry. He had been molesting her for years. 

While Rena attended college, she worked as a seasonal employee for the local Parks Branch and lived in the big family home with our stepmother Joan and our father Jock. During those summers, she disclosed Terry’s sexual assaults to Joan and Jean. Both chose to keep quiet about these disclosures. 

The day after the wedding, I returned home with my husband and children so I was not there when Jean told Belle about Terry abusing Rena. Belle called me later to tell me how she had lost control of every bodily function - screaming, puking, weeping, passing out, shaking, screaming some more. 

Somehow, she managed to get to David's house in Winnipeg. David, one of the younger brothers, had hosted the christening in the spring. Belle spent three days with him and his wife, Sandra, vomiting and weeping, sedated at times. 

In spite of her anguish, Belle phoned her husband. 

— from The Unravelling: Incest and the Destruction of a Family by Donna Besel. Published by Univeristy of Regina Press. © 2021 by Donna Besel.

The Unravelling: Incest and the Destruction of a Family
By Donna Besel (Published by University of Regina Press)

About The Unravelling: Incest and the Destruction of a Family:

It’s the antithesis of why a wedding should be memorable. In 1992, at a sister’s nuptials, Donna Besel’s family members discovered that their father, Jock Tod, had molested their youngest sister. After this disclosure, the other five sisters admitted their father had assaulted them when they were younger and had been doing so for years. Despite there being enough evidence to charge their father, the lengthy prosecution rocked Besel's family and deeply divided their small rural community.
 
The Unravelling is a brave, riveting telling of the destruction caused by sexual assault, and the physical, psychological, emotional, financial, and legal tolls survivors often shoulder.
 
Donna Besel offers an honest portrayal of the years-long police process from disclosure to prosecution that offers readers greater insight into the challenges victims face and the remarkable strength and resilience required to obtain some measure of justice.

Author Donna Besel

 About Donna Besel:

Donna Besel loves writing of all kinds, and does presentations for schools, libraries, universities, conferences, and retreats. Her work has gained recognition from CBC Literary Awards (three times), won national contests, and appeared in literary journals, magazines, and anthologies. Both of her books, a short story collection and a memoir, have been bestsellers.

Excerpt from Seeking Spirit: A Vietnamese (Non)Buddhist Memoir by Linda Trinh

After two thousand years, the historical truth of the two sisters, Trưng Trắc and Trưng Nhị, has evaporated into the winds of time, carried along by gusts of myth throughout the centuries. In the most traditional account of events, the one most widely reported by historians, the Trưng sisters were born into a noble family, their father part of the Lạc lords living in the Red River Delta valley, in Giao Chỉ province. Presently, this is close to Hà Nội in northern Vietnam. The Lạc lords believed they were descendants of the Hùng kings as part of the origin story of the Vietnamese people. The mountain fairy Âu Cơ and the sea dragon Lạc Long Quân had one hundred children together. When they parted ways, fifty children went with their mother to the mountains where they became the highlanders. Fifty children went with their father to the seashore where they became the Hùng kings of the Lạc people.

Even after two hundred years of governance, the Lạc people had no love for their Chinese rulers of the Han Dynasty. In an act intended to secure obedience, the Chinese Administrator had Trưng Trắc’s husband, Thi Sách, executed for insurrection. This act had the opposite effect. Trưng Trắc set aside her mourning clothes and took up sword and shield in 40 C.E.

The sisters raised a rebellion army of women and men and drove out the Chinese through quick and decisive raids and battles. Trưng Trắc was crowned queen and she ruled for three years. Yet in 43 C.E., the Chinese came back, and defeated the Trưng sisters.

The historical accounts do not mention the sisters riding elephants into battle. There are different accounts of their deaths. The account closest to the hearts of the Vietnamese is that the sisters drowned themselves in the Hát River, preserving their honour for eternity. Yet others have written they were captured, executed, and their heads delivered back to the Han capital.

The Trưng sisters had fallen.

And the legend of Hai Bà Trưng, two sisters Trưng, was born.

The first time I saw the dance of Hai Bà Trưng performed, tears welled up in my eyes and goose pimples dotted along the back of my neck and down my bare arms. The Duckworth Centre at the University of Winnipeg where the Pavilion was held was well air-conditioned during muggy August. Yet I felt heat rise to my cheeks and out through the top of my head. I crossed my arms over my chest to hold myself together, my reaction was so immediate.

Mighty warrior women. Mighty Vietnamese women. I felt this story deep in my bones, resonating through my blood. This was my introduction to the two sisters, my first glimpse into my own history. The Trưng sisters were certainly not part of the curriculum at General Wolfe School in the West End.

Growing up in Canada, I knew about European explorers and I knew about ancient Egypt. Yet I knew very little about the history of the country of my birth. I was three when we emigrated, and I had visited Vietnam only once before entering junior high. The Vietnam War, phở noodle soup, and people on motorbikes came quickest to mind when I thought about where I was born.

I focussed on Jen standing stationary on her war elephant. What was going through her mind? She had just deployed her army to battle the greater force of the Chinese. Was she fearful? Was she determined to see this to the end? When did Trưng Trắc know she was going to be defeated? When did she decide to give up her mortal life? Trưng Trắc, channelled through my sister, reached out from the past. Trưng Trắc illuminated my path through the mists of the spirit realm, highlighting the Vietnamese pull to the otherworldly.

Ever since the summer of the Saigon Pavilion, Trưng Trắc has been nearby. She became my role model; I was a shy girl who loved to read and play games of imagination, but I did not see myself in my cherished Lucy Maud Montgomery books and blonde Barbie dolls. It was the first time I saw myself, a Vietnamese girl, represented anywhere.

Trưng Trắc was a whisper in the wind after I closed the front door. She was a flash of light after I turned off the lamp in my bedroom. She was a heroine from the land of my ancestors. Powerful and proud. A thread wove its way from Trưng Trắc through the generations to me. She was not far, she was close.

I followed the thread that linked me to Trưng Trắc. Through her, I discovered the threads that bound me to my family, that bound me to my dad, in the realm of the spirits.

Ba had passed on before I celebrated my eighth birthday. He went into the hospital and never came out. I only recall flashes—wavy black hair and brown sunglasses, a belly laugh that was contagious and hands tanned like leather, wrinkled yet warm. Everyone said I’d inherited my darker skin from Ba, while Jen took after Má. My memories of him as bone and flesh are faded and fragmented.

And yet, after his passing, I saw him everyday staring through his photo from his altar. We shared meals together of rice, bi soup, pan fried pork, after Má cúnged. I saw him when I cleaned his altar every month. When I envision Ba, I see him in black and white as a young man in his mid-twenties from his altar photo. Even though I never knew that man in real life, the man from the picture has been a presence in my life.

The veil between the living and the dead is thin. Family passes on and yet they remain. My family swirls around me, ghosts without form yet true to essence. A hand at my back, a caress on my cheek. Whispering to me, steadying my feet. They are never far from this world. Not peering down from heaven but walking alongside me. Slipping in between the veil of human breath and shadow existence.

A crack in the window, a doorway not quite shut, a lid slightly ajar.

Enough of an opening through which

light may pass,

air may flow,

water may seep,

and spirit may come.

— from Seeking Spirit: A Vietnamese (Non)Buddhist Memoir by Linda Trinh. Published by Guernica Editions. © 2025 by Linda Trinh

Seeking Spirit by Linda Trinh

About Seeking Spirit:

Linda Trinh says she had everything she thought an immigrant woman should want: motherhood, career, and security. Yet she felt empty. Growing up in Winnipeg, Linda helped her mom make offerings to their ancestors and cleaned her late dad's altar. These were her mother's beliefs, but was Buddhism Linda's belief? In her late-twenties, Linda sought answers in Egypt and China and prayed during corporate downsizing, seeking meaning in contemporary life. Via a collection of essays, she plays with form and structure to show the interconnection of life events, trauma, and spiritual practice, to move from being a passive believer to an active seeker.

Author Linda Trinh.

About Linda Trinh:

Linda Trinh is an award-winning Vietnamese Canadian author of fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. She is the author of The Nguyen Kids series. Her work has appeared in various anthologies and literary magazines, and has been nominated for numerous awards. The Secret of the Jade Bangle co-won the Manitoba Book Award for best first book. Linda immigrated to Canada with her family from Vietnam when she was three years old. She and her older sister were raised by a single mother, surrounded by extended family in the West End of Winnipeg, after her father passed away when she was seven. Growing up, she did not see herself represented in books and that absence influences her exploration of identity, cultural background, and spirituality. She lives with her husband and two kids in Winnipeg, on ancestral lands, Treaty 1 territory, traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene Peoples, and on the National Homeland of the Red River Métis.