Fire Fuel Ignition

A car that wouldn't start. A father's simple analogy. A lifetime of learning to survive.

When Aleda Phillips's car wouldn't start one morning, her father knelt beside the engine and taught her a lesson that would carry her through the darkest years of her childhood. Every engine runs on three things: fire, fuel, and ignition.

Fire Fuel Ignition is Aleda's unflinching personal account of surviving a childhood marked by physical, emotional, and mental abuse, and the stepfather whose steady love became the one constant she could hold onto. Her story doesn't just recount trauma; it maps a way through it.

Through heavy childhood memories and moments of unexplained grace, Aleda shows how she gathered the pieces of herself until she found the strength to turn the Key and drive toward a life she once thought impossible.

Fire Fuel Ignition is for anyone who has ever had to build themselves back up from very little. It's an opportunity to see for yourself that no matter how dark the road, there is always something more.

Trigger warning: This book contains firsthand accounts of childhood physical, emotional, and mental abuse; domestic violence; and a parental suicide attempt.