We Don't Raise Assholes

A missing gun. Four sleeping kids. An 88-degree house in the desert. And one mother realizing, very clearly, that nobody was coming to save them.Greta Stock was raised to be a good Mormon girl. Obedient. Pretty. Forgiving. Quiet. She married the returned missionary. Had the babies. Bought the house. Made the pancakes. Hung the Christmas lights. Built the kind of life people complimented from the outside. Mental illness of a spouse is taboo. In sickness and in health, right?Her husband unraveled. Her church lost its shine. Her mother sharpened guilt into a parenting style. Her father became the kind of family secret that ends up in federal paperwork. Then the man who once promised forever became someone she checked the locks for at night.We Don't Raise Assholes is not a soft little healing memoir about forgiveness and finding yourself in a sunhat.It is a match in a gas leak.This is divorce with four kids watching. Motherhood with no village. Religious trauma with lipstick on. Family court, fertility treatments, sex, shame, rage, police reports, cheap cereal, dark humor, and the feral magic of a woman who finally stops making herself digestible.Greta does not float gracefully out of the ashes.She crawls out barefoot, furious, responsible for snacks, and still laughing.This book is for every woman who was told to calm down while her life was on fire. Every daughter who had to survive her parents. Every wife who mistook crumbs for love. Every mother who became the whole damn emergency plan.It is messy. It is sharp. It is glitter-covered and blood-warm.A memoir about breaking cycles, burning scripts, keeping the house, raising the kids, and teaching them the one family rule that matters: Don't be an asshole.