Nothing Bad Between Us

Marlena grew up in Paraguay within a tight-knit Mennonite mission community, where she was raised to see her surroundings as both a source of belonging and a set of strict limits. Her father was a physician who cared for people with leprosy, yet at home he was violent, so the man the community admired and the man she lived with were hard to reconcile. Marlena wanted both to fit in with the people around her and to get away to a place where she could start over. A public humiliation later in her life forced her to face these competing pulls.

This memoir follows her as she begins to take charge of her own life and to accept herself as she is, including the scars and flaws she has carried. It traces her path from damage toward a hard-won sense of wholeness, looking closely at how she came to understand forgiveness and at the ways she reconnected with the people who had hurt her.

The book speaks to readers who have experienced harm in close communities, who are working through family wounds, or who are searching for a way toward healing and reconciliation.