Moore also tells the story of how she and her sister Gay saved their parents’ marriage when their whole world was falling apart. Moore’s mother had long suspected her father of infidelity. He had always denied it and claimed Moore’s mother, who suffered from severe depression, was crazy and unstable.

Then Gay found a love letter from her dad’s mistress taped to the underside of a drawer in his desk. The two girls sprang into action, calling their father’s lover and telling her to stay away. It was an act of desperation, Moore told Religion News Service, born out of fear that the family would break apart and they’d be left homeless.

“More than anything it was a way to exercise what little power we had,” Moore said, who dedicated her memoir to her husband and siblings, including Gay and her older brother Wayne, a retired composer who passed away two weeks before the memoir was due to be published.

That call, which Moore credits to her “fearless” sister Gay, changed the course of the family’s life. Knowing the truth about her father’s infidelity gave her mom confidence after doubting herself for years.