Chicken Salad Sandwich

Gretchen Patterson lives in a mansion with locked iron gates, the daughter of a successful oil executive. From the outside, her life looks perfect. But behind those gates, dinner isn't a family gathering—it's a battlefield.

Night after night, Gretchen watches her father throw food across the table in drunken rages while her mother drinks herself numb. Roast beef becomes a missile. Mashed potatoes slide down walls. Wine bottles shatter TV screens. And Gretchen stops eating, because controlling what goes into her body is the only power she has left.

With a titanium rod in her spine from surgery and invisible scars from years of survival, Gretchen hatches a plan to escape. She applies to colleges three thousand miles away, steals financial documents in the dead of night, and stands up to her father for the first time in her life.

This is a story about what happens behind closed doors in houses that look perfect. About the price of success when it comes at the cost of family. About a girl who learns that sometimes the bravest thing you can do is save yourself.

Raw, honest, and deeply human, "Chicken Salad Sandwich" reveals the hidden reality of executive life at home and one daughter's fierce determination to break free.