Jetta Remonia Owens grew up in a house filled with abuse and neglect. Her mother was hardly home to care for her and her six sisters, and when she was there, they usually received severe beatings with an extension cord and were forced into a tub of scalding hot water. Like a butterfly that has emerged from its cocoon too early, Jetta and her sisters were crippled by exposure to cruelty and brutality at a young age. The only protection they received was from their father, but after he was arrested for gambling he spent his last days in prison, dying from liver disease. The situation at home became darker. Jetta watched as her mother pimped out her sisters one by one. Her mother's greed knew no limits. But Jetta resolved to be nothing like them. She clung to the dream of becoming a hair dresser, but would that dream be enough to keep her out of prostitution and drug use? Or would she find her mother could pimp her out just as easily as her sisters? Follow Jetta's life from adolescence to adulthood in part one of this heartbreaking memoir -To Cripple a Butterfly.