Jacob Sandler is an ordinary 14-year-old. Having settled down in the small town of Fergus, with his single Mother, his biggest worry is working up the courage to ask the girl he likes to the high school dance. All this changes when a stranger arrives in town revealing a horrifying secret that turns his and his mother’s life upside down.
For 16-year-old Patti Crane, the decision not to become a victim is simple, so rather than wait for her stepfather to start abusing her like he does her older sister, she runs away from home to Los Angeles. It’s the late 1960’s and she soon find herself immersed in the Manson-like cult group, The Tribe, led by the charismatic Goodnight Lane, who preaches the hippie ideal. Their peace and love stance eventually devolves into a murder spree, and when the authorities catch up with them, Patti uses her cunning to cut a deal that sees her do less time than the other guilty parties – a deal that outrages the public.
It is now 30 years later, and the World discovers Patti Crane has been living quietly and secretly under the name Helen Sandler in the peaceful small town of Fergus, along with her teenage son, Jacob. The World has never forgiven Patti for the role she played in The Tribe’s infamous cult murders, nor do they plan to do so now. And Jacob soon discovers the sins of the mother have fallen on him, as part of the general public outrage of her discovery. Confronted with a Mother he now knows he never really knew, and the misplaced hatred of others, young Jacob sets out to try and find a way to deal with a past he didn’t know about or have anything to do with, and prove he is not his Mother, but instead an innocent teenager with hopes and dreams for his own future, and he must do so by delving into the sordid and deadly past that once belonged to his Mother.
The Ties That Bind focuses both on Jacob’s Mother’s descent into the hippie-like cult that will be her undoing in 1967, as well as Jacob’s coming to terms with that previously unknown past in 1997. The Ties That Bind, although a work of fiction, was loosely inspired by a true story. ♥