The Angel with Burnt Wings
Scarlett Jensen, 2013
Authorhouse
212 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781481798426
Summary
This story is based on true life happenings of Alice. Most of us know the story of Alice in Wonderland. In the fairy tale, Alice follows a rabbit with pink eyes into a hole and the magical adventure begins.
In the book, The Angel with Burnt Wings, our Alice, follows a man called Vice and lands with him in prison. Prisonland becomes her destiny, where she spends many years. Discover the extraordinary world of shackled dreams, painful pasts and the hope for pure rebirth and victory.
Nothing could be a more true reflection of shackled lives behind the media's publicity-seeking headlines that strike a whole country from time to time. In this book we are reminded of gripping stories of sexual abuse, downfall, sex webs, prostitution, crime, shackles and shame, the heartache of a robber child and inflamed passion and devotion to a dominant lover.
We often wonder what has become of such victims. This story tells us of a real life crushing fall of an angel with burnt wings and her victory in becoming whole again through the anointing miracle of forgiveness.
This is a book that should be widely read to inspire us to claim and confirm our moral confines and social responsibilities. These events can happen to anyone of us. Parents open your senses and hear the cries of your children in obscurity. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 9, 1951
• Where—South Africa
• Education—B.A., University of Pretoria
• Currently—near Cape Town, South Africa
Scarlett Jensen was born in South Africa from Italian parents who established themselves in South Africa after World War ll. As her mother tongue is Italian, she was able to scrutinize Italian literature and with that she could also present real life experiences of women in jail in Italy.
Jensen received a B.A. in Psychology, Sociology and Criminology. She earned high level diplomas and experience in Public Administration and Management during her 27 year in the South African government service. Her area of work included human resources, education, arts, culture, language, science and technology. After retirement from the public service in 1999, Jensen obtained her International Diplomas in Aesthetics and Body Therapy specializing in Swedish Massage and Reflexology. For her dissertation she wrote a study guide for the practice of Aesthetics and Body Therapies in a clinical situation. As health and beauty specialist, principal and lecturer she managed her own clinic and school until 2010.
For the past 3 years Scarlett Jensen has been a freelance writer living near Cape Town in the Western Cape in South Africa. It was during this period that she became acquainted with the story of Alice which was related to her in her professional capacity. (From the author.)
Visit the author's website.
Book Reviews
(The following review was compiled by the publisher as a news release complied and mailed to over 600 media outlets throughout the English-speaking world.)
In The Angel with Burnt Wings, Jensen's new fictional memoir, readers are invited into the deepest, darkest recesses of Jensen's mind as she takes them into the once black hole of sexual abuse, crime and punishment that was her life.
Readers meet Alice, Jensen's alter ego, the angel with burnt wings, who lives a shackled life. As Alice begins to find herself and break away from the pit of despair she has fallen into, she also begins to shed her skin of Alice. With each step she takes towards the distant light, she begins to become Jensen.
Readers wach as Alice becomes a distant memory left in the cold, damp jail cell and how Jensen pushes her new life up into the light to become a golden girl.
This book looks back at her past life, says Jensen. It looks back at her downfall into a web of sex, shackles and shame and how she overcame and persevered to become the woman she is today. Only with God's help can we soar above the crushing influences. Only with God can we turn a mess into a message, a test into a testimony, a trial into triumph and a victim into a victory.
Authorhouse publishers
Discussion Questions
1. Talk about some of the keywords depicting the theme/subject of the book.
Prison book, child abuse, molestation, rape, prostitution, homosexuality, lost innocence, forgiveness, heaven and hell, rehabilitation in prison, parent-child relationships, juvenile crime and punishment, women in prison.
2. What inspired the author to write the book?
It is a story based on real life happenings. It was related to the author by Alice's mother. The author saw the potential in this gripping story to bring forth lessons to the world from the teenager's obscured life and the real life consequences of a self, broken down in scattered pieces and the will to stand up and start a renewed life through the amazing grace and forgiveness she received from God. With rebirth she acquired spiritual freedom. Alice, with the angelic face, was a straight-A student and she offered almost three decades of happenings in her life, written in an exceptional manner in her diaries and letters to her mother which formed the basic recordings of her reality, crushing down on her young soul that was caught up in a black hole of hell on earth.
3. What is the overall theme, central topic or concept of the book?
It is a story of downfall of a girl of 19. She lost her innocence and had to pick-up the pieces scattered everywhere. In prison after crime, she spent many years to reconstruct her life. The story parallels perfectly with the fairy tale of Alice in Wonderland. The analogies from Wonderland are very real and true to Prisonland. The analogy of coming closer to God is the ultimate exciting climax of the story. Alice's downfall was the catalyst that lead her to her greatest victory, namely to hold God's hand forever. The reasoning in the book is powerful. The book reveals supreme insight by the author in the matter. The analogies and images the author describes are very real and true to the point.
The paragraph is an exerpt from a review on www.fanstory.com. Talk about your experience reading The Angel with Burnt Wings.
"I will be honest, it is the first story I read at Fanstory and I am so impressed from beginning to end. I just wanted to read every single word. So powerful. It is a mixed story; a beautiful one" (T. Bach).
4. Where does the story in the book take place?
The story plays off in the black hole of sexual abuse, prostitution, crime and punishment in Prisonland. Prisonland can be visualized as a grotto of vice and punishment. The real life events happened in South Africa, but the names of places and people have been changed to protect their identity.
5. Who are the main characters and why are they important in the story
The main player is Alice. The out of the ordinary things which happen to Alice in Wonderland made Wonderland a classic feature in many stories, films, plays and made Alice a beloved character with whom we mostly all, can identify with. The fairy tale, "Alice in Wonderland", by Lewis Carroll, which is public domain, formed an excellent trajectory to explore the in-depth meaning of a master's choice of events that take place in Wonderland. Carroll conveyed insight in the truths of humanity we all can learn from today.
It was a revelation to the author to interpret the curious events that happened to Alice in Wonderland, in a context of real prison life. Just like Alice in Wonderland, in real life, a person fights to access freedom we are all meant to have by right. The unrestricted means to fly and enter paradise become so real and easy in this powerful story of Alice in prison. You can live beyond the restriction of your physical, mental and spiritual bars when your forgiveness from God enables you to fly as an angel. The scars on Alice's wings are there to show the world that she had suffered deep sorrow, but was healed. This emphasises the fact that we need forgiveness and with its power we are enabled to fly free after incarceration and redemption.
6. Why does the author think the book will appeal to readers?
The author interprets freedom with supreme clarity and succintness. For open eyes, freedom has a familiar face. From a place of stark reality, a prison, Alice won her freedom. We though, are all imprisoned in the confines of our mind, even if it represents a guilded cage. Of course there are those of inner cages that have trapped us with fear, guilt and shame. Some of us never get passed that stage and we are stuck withour ghosts. With this book readers will find ways to earn their freedom. It is a promise.
7. Is there a particular passage from the book the author wishes to utilise?
" I had placed myself in an unbarred cage. I was cut off by nothing, yet I could not pass into a clean life. A desperate anger flushed my cheeks from time from time. I wanted to break the chains of all the limitations inside me. I suffered a crucial period of internal war and turmoil under loads of anguish and fear. I broke loose and decended straight into the iron age of my life when I was arrested and started life behind bars, iron bars. This was my final decent.
" My confusion about who I was when Iived in the black hole must have been like Alice's (Alice in Wonderland). I also wondered if anything would ever happen in a natural way again. I had so many selves, had lived so many sizes and played so many roles. Each self had a different role. I became somebody else in hiding the truth. I became "nothing" when I despised myself. I became violent and angry with flaming eyes when I drank the "poison of abuse". But at last, I became peaceful when I lay in God's hands outside the black hole."
8. What makes this book different from other books like it?
This book shows us how a life is broken up to the core and how it can be reconstructed to become whole again. The truths of a classic masterpiece, like Alice in Wonderland, form a trajectory on which the story is based. This amazingly underlines how the new book's Prisonland parallels with Wonderland. In a sense both stories draw from each other. The comparisons, analogies and images in the new book are both very real and to the point. The author also saw in the new book, the chance to reactivate the truths of the magical tale of Wonderland for young and old to a grown-up new audience.
(Questions courtesy of the author.)