"I believed my mother bestowed her own name to me out of deep affection. I soon realized the name was etched on a double-edged sword---dipped in venom, surreptitiously designed to pierce the heart of a tyrant. Only it ricocheted into mine..." In "Burning Down the Country House," Carol Williams explores the circumstances leading up to the fiery end of a marriage built on deceit, power plays, and ignorance. Carol interjects hilarious anecdotes into this poignant account of a family under duress, as seen through the eyes of her child protagonist: Addie. Addie relates a heartrending story of physical and emotional abuse, poverty, anger, social prejudices, innocence lost, and spiritual decay---in the wake of an injudicious abstraction of God, and truth. Addie's passion for life was interrupted at an early age by a sequence of disturbing events, too tragic for her young mind to comprehend, yet she held tight to what she remembered as truth. Ultimately she is broken, with only her mother's songs in her head to keep her safe. It would be a long and tiresome road to a place of forgiveness, trust, and redemption. Carol delves into the dark trenches of spiritual poverty, when the head of a household replaced the One True and Living God with one of his own making. She writes, ""It is like bolting the doors and burning down the house with everyone still inside.""