Cheney author Susan Carter recently released her memoir, “Five Tickets to Kansas.”

The storyline follows the lives of three individuals, interwoven by common themes of family, conflicts, and reconciliation. It begins in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada where a young couple, faced with infidelity and addictions, must decide between forgiveness or revenge. Their choices will affect their destinies and the lives of their children.

Carter said as traumatized children, she and her siblings never talked about their childhood. This omission meant that their children were clueless about their parents’ history.

“A primary impetus for writing the book was to give my family a history of the events that shaped our lives, in the hopes that the next generation would learn from our mistakes, and not repeat them,” Carter said. “A second reason for writing the book was to give hope to those in traumatized situations; healing is possible, and to the perpetrators, forgiveness is obtainable.”

The title of “Five Tickets to Kansas” comes from the fact that only five, including herself, of Carter’s eight siblings were adopted by a Cheney couple.

The book relates the backstory of the events leading up to their adoption, the transition into an adoptive situation, and the reconciliation between Carter and her siblings and their birth parents. She relates the story of all nine children, including a child born outside her birth parents’ marriage, and what became of them.

Writing the story forced Carter to stop and view events from her parents’ perspective.

“I had to think their thoughts, feel their pain,” Carter said. “It was very cathartic.”

With her story, she hoped to show that through the grace of God, healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation are possible. She sought to illustrate how these works take a lifetime.

“It’s not a quick onetwo- three step process,” Carter said.

Carter wrote her story over the course of five years.

Her process included checking history to verify details.

For example, she mentions the Pillsbury Doughboy. She had to check the years he was popular to verify her memory correctly.

This verification extended to even making sure the year a car was available was correct, as well as a restaurant her mother ate at in 1959.

On June 1, “Five Tickets to Kansas” won first place memoir in the Blue Ridge Mountain Conference Selah Contest.

Carter hopes to communicate a message through her story.

“God loves us, and He has healing and forgiveness for every broken person in this world,” Carter said. “I can’t promise every relationship will end in reconciliation, but I do know God loves us, and that He wants to forgive and restore every broken heart.”

“Five Tickets to Kansas” by Susan Carter can be purchased on Amazon.