Maude still remembers the sound of the lock when the gate closed on their new home. She was three years old when she and her parents moved into that secluded manor, and she would only be allowed out again a handful of times. Here the young Maude endured a strict 'training' regime of home schooling and tough manual labour. She had to learn to hold an electric fence without flinching, master ten instruments, act sober while intoxicated and move objects with her mind. Her freemason father’s mission was to make her a super human who would preserve his legacy – and save the world.
Alone, Maude had no other children to play with. Instead, she found solace in the heroes of the books she read, in the pets she kept and, eventually, in the kindness of strangers who engineered her escape.
Now a successful child psychologist, Maude's story is both heart-breaking and heart-warming, and shows the resilience of the human spirit to overcome suffering.
