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Black
Beaumont native Diane N. Black, who also started her own publishing company, Black Flower Press, released her first book at the end of March, titled “Dead Dog Road: A True Story into the Dark World of an Abused Child.” According to Black, the book is about a child abuse case that unraveled in Hardin County while she was the director of a children’s home in Silsbee.
The book is set in a small Texas town, where the director of a children’s home tries to save three adopted Russian children living with a sadistic woman in the backwoods of Caney Head.
Black described the story as a descriptive of “the failure of the agencies we trust to protect the most vulnerable among us — and a truth more compelling and powerful than we could imagine.”
In the book, abuse reports from neighbors drew attention to 12-year-old Alexey, who runs away to hide in the woods. The local child protection agency sends the director of the children’s home to visit Alexey and his younger sisters, Anastasia and Svetlana.
Despite a compelling report from the child protective liaison, the agency believes the denials of the adoptive mother and leaves the children in the abusive home. Knowing the horrible truth, the director faces one obstacle after another as she tries to find someone to protect the children from the unspeakable.
“It’s not based on a true story,” Black assured of the book about deception, inadequate systems in place to protect children, and looking the other way when it comes to child abuse. “The story is true.”
“I just told the truth and changed a few names,” Black said, indicating the story covers several years from 2008 to 2014. Scenes in the book take place in Beaumont, Port Arthur, Silsbee, Evadale, Jasper, and areas near Hemphill, and Liberty County.
“I wrote Dead Dog Road as a result of systemic failure in our child abuse system,” Black added. “Most people know how poorly the system functions. The question is, ‘What are we going to do about it?’”
Black, who earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Social Work and a master’s degree in education in Counseling and Development from Lamar University, worked as a licensed professional counselor in clinical and private practice since 2004. Years later, Black founded and was director of the Roosevelt House children’s home in Silsbee from 2007 to 2009.
“When I was a counselor and had a contract with Child Protective Services (CPS), I saw a lot of abused kids and they were often children placed in facilities or a children’s home,” Black said of the psychological assessments she was contracted to perform. Divulging what she learned to others proved problematic. “It was hard to get the story across to anyone or help anyone understand. That’s why I wrote the book. It took an entire book to tell the story. There’s nothing in the book that I cannot back up.”
Stranded in a hotel in Tyler for a couple of weeks because of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, Black got the idea to write the book. She tried to find a ghostwriter but didn’t know how to find one – nor could she afford one.
“I literally did not know how to write a book,” she said. “I didn’t know I did. I kind of figured it out along the way.”
Black said she wrote the first draft during the Harvey evacuation and it’s written “like fiction, but it’s true.” She spent the next three years studying writing and finishing the book.
“On the first draft, the person who edited it sent a copy to a publisher in New York and he really liked it,” she said. “It never changed very much but it was polished for things like word choice and punctuation.”
The book has received good reviews.
“Now and then, a book comes along that is so heart-breakingly good that you cannot put it down and cannot stop thinking about it even after the last page has come to an end,” wrote reviewer wrote Jenny Louwes. “It stays with you for life, calling for you to be part of the solution that fixes all that is wrong. Because now that you know the truth, you can no longer claim ignorance. Once you know the truth, you have to act because, if you do nothing, you are choosing to side with evil, and how could you possibly do that?”
Black, who currently resides in the Dallas metropolitan area, said she is already in the beginning steps of writing another book that takes place during the 1900 Galveston hurricane.