On April 14, 1989, in California’s idyllic Sonoma Valley, Mexican immigrant Ramon Salcido went on a rampage, killing his wife, her two younger sisters, his mother-in-law, and his wife’s suspected lover. Then he slashed the throats of his three young daughters-ages four years, three years, and twenty-two months-and left them for dead in the county dump. A day later, when the children’s bodies were finally discovered, three-year-old Carmina was miraculously still alive. Daddy cut me, she told her rescuers.

In Not Lost Forever, Carmina Salcido reaches back into her traumatic past to reconstruct, in sobering detail, her father’s crimes and their aftermath. Recalling with clear-eyed candor, courage, and grace the horrific event and troubled childhood that followed, a remarkable young woman carries readers along on her miraculous journey of survival, discovery, and hope.