The Red Velvet Dress

I hate to say it but "The Red Velvet Dress" really kept my attention throughout the entire story. Violence, incest, affairs, it had all the trappings of a Danielle Steel novel. Katrina has been in prison for 20 years for the murder of her father and the story opens as she sits at her mothers death bed with her aunt Tante. As the story unfolds we find out that Katrina and her best friend were sexually and physically abused by Katrina's father for all of their young lives. Katrina's best friend bares one child belonging to Katrina's father and when she becomes pregnant by him a second time and is subsequently run off of the farm they live on, she hangs herself. Katrina comes upon her friends lifeless body and shoots her father. Tante, Katrina's aunt, finally reveals to her that the man responsible for all of this horror was not her real father. This explains why Katrina has dark skin and hair in a light skinned family. Tante also reveals that Katrina's real father was murdered by the father she has grown up with after he discovered the affair between Katrina's mother and the other man. When Katrina's mother finally dies at the end of the novel, I was still in shock.