This story contains child sexual abuse, domestic violence, and suicide. Reader discretion is advised.

Once upon a time?and this is how all the old stories begin, though none of them are true the way this one is true?there was a girl named Cindy who was taken by a wolf at twelve and didn't escape for thirty years.

She had three children. She learned to be hollow. She ran and was caught and ran again.

Then she found a beach where sea turtles came to rest at sunset. Creatures who carry their homes on their backs. She watched them for fifteen years. And when her story was nearly done, she chose her own ending.

The Girl Who Loved Turtles is a dark fairy tale about survival?about wolves and rabbits and the daughters who learn to carry their homes on their backs.

This story is not fiction.