Before the breaking began, there was a foundation built of Georgia red dirt and a grandfather's steady hand.

In this raw and evocative opening to a multi-part memoir series, Before Broken: A Story of Roots and Resilience takes readers back to the very beginning. Born into a "shotgun contract" of a marriage that was never meant to last, Crystal Bostick arrived in the world as a self-described "inconvenience" to a mother who considered walking away. But standing in the gap was her Mema-a woman whose "no" had the weight of a closing vault door-and a farm that offered the only safety she would ever truly know.

Covering the first sixteen years of a life shaped by the long, flat stretches of South Georgia, this volume explores a childhood caught between the sterile silence of hospital halls and the vibrating hum of a Mack truck cab. It is a story of a girlhood navigated from the middle of a bench seat on the open highway, where the crackle of a CB radio was the soundtrack to a family business held together by loyalty rather than easy love.

Everything changed on a Saturday in 1989 when a ninety-mile-per-hour collision on a red dirt road bisected Crystal's life into a permanent "before" and "after." From the wreckage of that impact emerged a four-year-old girl who didn't scream, but instead gave instructions to her rescuers-a child already learning that stubbornness could be armor.

Before Broken is an intimate portrait of those foundational years-the years of high fevers, family secrets, and the fierce protection of grandparents who chose a child when no one else would. It is a testament to the strength we gather before we even know we will need it, and the essential first chapter of a journey from breaking to becoming.