bill vietti

Sexually abused children never reach a “someday” when the horror stops. Even in adulthood, night terrors frequently disturb their sleep, trust in or loving someone else is elusive or even impossible. The psychological anguish often lasts an entire lifetime, long after the actual atrocities have ceased.

In There Is No Someday, John and his sisters have suffered horrendous abuses by their father. He sees no end to the torture and knows what he has to do about it. He plans and successfully carries out the killing of his dad. At the time he is certain that he is justified in what he has done – it was self-defense – their means of survival. And yet afterward, he is relentlessly tormented by the memories of the abuse. He wonders if the thoughts and nightmares will ever end. In addition he now fears being imprisoned for his dad's murder. He needs justification from someone, exoneration, vindication for what he has done. But none will come. Even though the man's death is ruled to have been an accident, John desperately wants to let everyone know why he has done what he did. But he can't tell anyone. Not his mother or his younger sister, not his dad's parents. All of them seem terribly saddened by his father's death. If he just tells them about what his dad did to his older sister; if he tells them that his dad had threatened to kill him if he ever told what he had seen; if he just tells them that he knew what his dad was doing to his little sister;wouldn't it have been all right? Wouldn't they tell him that what he had done was not wrong?

John lives with unremitting torment, shame, and guilt from his past. A life-long loner now in his thirties, he is working as a big-game hunting guide when he suffers a horrific accident that leaves him clinging to life in a hospital. In a drug-induced state during recovery, he inadvertently reveals more to his young hunting client than he ever intends to about the death of his father. And the consequences of their exchange lead to John's re-examining his beliefs of right and wrong. He realizes, contrary to what he had been taught through religion or by any laws, but in his own way, that he was indeed justified in his actions as a teenager. He understands, finally, that he had not been wrong in what he had done all those years before. And that ultimate vindication will change not only his life, but that of another lost teenager that day.

There Is No Someday is a book designed to make readers think for themselves. It questions several basic religious tenets. It's a book about what's right and what's wrong. And the reader must decide which is which.