Three Generations of Family Secrets and Midlife Crises All Set the Stage for One Dream to Come True. A week before Christmas 1951, Dr. Ralph Russell risked everything to voluntarily enter a locked federal drug-treatment facility known as a "narcotic farm." Sixty-five years later, Dr. Russell's granddaughter Debbie suffers a debilitating crisis of identity when her father (Dr. Russell's oldest son), always her biggest fan, is accepted into hospice. Debbie's investigation into her paternal lineage reveals family secrets and ignites her mother's volatile outbursts, propelling her into therapy. When therapy fails her, the grandfather Debbie never knew saves her, and she collaborates with her dying father one last time to make her biggest dream come true. Crossing Fifty-One pulls back the curtain on the internal struggles of midlife and provides a blueprint for redefining one's self beyond the constraints of addiction and dysfunctional family dynamics. Debbie Russell navigates anticipatory grief over the decline of her father by embarking on a quest to preserve his legacy, inadvertently uncovering hidden family secrets along the way. She skillfully utilizes her investigative and litigation experiences to weave a persuasive multigenerational account that reads more like mystery than memoir. I consumed it in one sitting and can highly recommend this captivating debut! -- Nita Sweeney, best-selling author of Depression Hates a Moving Target The generational threads that can bind us together or tear us apart take center stage in this raw and honest mid-life reckoning. A universal tale of family secrets and love in the face of dysfunction--and how the lessons from the past can come back around to save our futures. --Deborah Burns, award-winning author of Saturday's Child A story of intergenerational inheritance and choosing what we keep, the author's journey to discover what happened in earlier generations is the catalyst for empathy for her family and for herself. Cheers to author Debbie Russell for unlocking the door that had seemed firmly shut for too long. -- Lizbeth Meredith, award-winning author of Pieces of Me: Rescuing My Kidnapped Daughters This debut author has created a replication of a flawed and bruised family dynamic that reads like a novel and carries a universality that is quite human, and extremely well developed. --Greg Fields, award-winning author of Through the Waters and the Wild I started reading and I simply couldn't stop! The story is beautiful and will help so many people. --Tracy C. Ertl, Publisher, TitleTown Publishing LLC Debbie Russell is a lawyer turned writer. She spent twenty-five years as an assistant county attorney in Minneapolis, prosecuting numerous high-profile cases and fighting off several nervous breakdowns. At age fifty-five, Debbie took early retirement, giving up a full pension for the freedom of time. She now spends that precious time writing, restoring her property to native prairie and wetlands, and training her rambunctious retrievers.