House Rules: A Memoir

Behind the polished surface of an Evanston family lies a childhood governed by arbitrary demands and taped-up house rules.

A memoir of a father obsessed with control and the daughter who fights his suffocating grasp, House Rules explores the complexities of their compelling and destructive relationship as Rachel fights to escape, and, later, to make sense of what remains of her family.

Sontag reconstructs the suburban household where her father, a respected medical doctor, enforced strict dictates through laminated contracts, locked telephones, and late-night interrogations in the living room.

The memoir tracks the family across vacations in Cancún and Paris, where outward trips masked an escalating series of domestic punishments. Subsequent chapters follow Rachel through high school speech contests and a semester in Washington, D.C., as she seeks refuge from her father's watchful eye.

• Dysfunctional Families: Behind an outward veneer of travel and suburban success, the Sontag home operated under duct-taped rules, hidden bottles of codeine, and phone calls secretly recorded to a steel safe.
• Emotional Abuse: Long evenings in the Evanston living room turned into relentless cross-examinations, with Rachel ordered to write down dictated catalogs of insults on legal pads.
• Childhood Trauma: After school counselors grew alarmed by her father's intrusive calls, Rachel spent weeks inside The Harbor, a suburban group home that offered an unexpected refuge from domestic tyranny.
• Family Dynamics: Caught between an overbearing husband and her daughters, Rachel's mother alternated between whispered plans to flee to Wisconsin and sudden outbursts of physical violence on the kitchen floor.

The book, House Rules: A Memoir [Bulk, Wholesale, Quantity] ISBN#9780061341236 in Paperback by Rachel Sontag may be ordered in bulk quantities. Minimum starts at 25 copies. Availability based on publisher status and quantity being ordered.