MEMOIR
5 3/8 × 83/8, 226 pages, $17
Paperback ISBN: 978617367954-4-6, $17
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-960573-05-6, $13.30
Publication Date: October 3, 2023
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Donna Marie Hayes had fortitude and smarts. She’d already survived so much. In this gripping memoir, Hayes
recounts the story of her impoverished Jamaican childhood and eventual immigration to the United States at 14.
She weathers hardships, including a strict church upbringing, family abandonment, and marriages fused with
domestic violence. Then she breaks free as a single mother.
A decade later, Donna is educated and at the top of her game in New York City. Her career is soaring on Wall Street
and she is starring in her own one woman show off Broadway. Yet at the peak of her triumph, she is scammed and
robbed of her life’s savings by the “love of her life” who she meets on an online dating site. The mastermind was
not the usual faceless online fraudster, hiding behind a computer screen in a faraway land; rather, he slept beside
her for a year and a half, pretending to be the love of her life.
This is the story of how that woman rose yet again to find her power, making the scam and her choice of such a
man the last run along the broken roads of her past.
“These Broken Roads is Hayes’ Cinderella story beginning in the Jamaican countryside and ending in an Uptown Penthouse. It is a journey from betrayal to self-discovery. It is a coming of age that is at once human and hopeful. Hayes’ life, though complicated by duplicity is consistently buoyed by a strength and competence that is in moments, breathtaking. Pick up this book. You will not be able to put it down.”
- Joselin Linder, author of The Family Gene, HarperCollins
“A riveting memoir, These Broken Roads is an against all odds story.”
- Robin Bobbé, Modernager Casting, owner
“Magical, painful, cathartic, and thrilling at once.”
- Thomas G. Waites, actor, teacher, and filmmaker
"A glorious testament to the triumphant spirit we all have within. Donna shares her remarkable life story with incredible vulnerability and clarity. Taking us on a journey from rural Jamaica to the high rises of the Upper East side of Manhattan, filled with challenges that are ultimately turned into lessons….for us all. Bravo, a beautiful read."
- Annie McGovern, Actor, Director/Producer, Singer and VP of Simulations, Inc.
OUT NOW wherever books are sold and for pre-sale at the following stores:
For more information about Donna’s book, use this QR code to meet the author, read an excerpt or learn more about the book
