"A Life Divided"

by Helen Bethea

"A Life Divided" describes the difficulties she encountered in life due to the color of her skin and her married life and how she came to overcome them. She describes how, during the racial segregation era, she had to stop her schooling because of the troubles she went through due to being born into a white family with a different skin color. She managed some schooling in Dillon, and later on fall for and marries Chris. She was appalled to see Chris unraveling as a womanizing, abusive, manipulative husband, contrary to his nerdy past. Thirty-two years of marriage ended in divorce after countless dramatic confrontation between the two of them. In the end she received the settlement that set her free of him. She turned to God and mused about the changing social landscape when race and color had now largely become a thing of the past, and-at the time of her writing-a black person was even running for president of United States.