Spilled Milk: Based on a True Story

Spilled Milk (2013) is a memoir written in the form of a fictional novel by K. L. Randis (under the pseudonym Brooke Nolan). Randis was subjected to severe sexual abuse by her father as a child and became an advocate and educator determined to prevent others from having similar experiences. Randis’s family also experienced severe physical, emotional, and economic abuse. She wrote her memoir to give children and adults alike a tool to validate their own experiences. The memoir examines themes of resilience, speaking out against injustice, the power of secrets and denial, and loyalty to one’s family.

This guide is based on the 2015 edition of the text.

Content Warning: Spilled Milk contains graphic descriptions of physical and sexual abuse against a child (specifically incest), drug use, miscarriage, a suicide attempt, and a death by cancer.

Plot Summary

Randis’s memoir Spilled Milk, written under the pseudonym Brooke Nolan, opens as her 19-year-old self sits in the waiting room for her final court date in a case against her father. The memoir flashes back to when Brooke was six, when she was asked to keep a secret by her father. While playing in a pool, Brooke’s seven-year-old brother Adam falls unconscious. Brooke’s father David performs CPR, and when a neighbor insists on calling an ambulance, David says Adam is fine. David then asks Brooke not to tell her mother about the incident, beginning a long series of secrets. Brooke also describes her grandmother buying her a journal. When Brooke’s journal fills up with secrets, she begins using her friend Alyssa’s journal, and Alyssa’s mother finds out that Brooke wrote about sex. Brooke’s mother Molly shames and threatens Brooke to never write sexual content again; Brooke’s father reacts similarly. When Brooke is nine, her eight-year-old brother Thomas is threatened with a knife and his bike is stolen. When a policeman brings the shocked Thomas home, Molly tells him that he deserved the assault. When a hospital is suggested, Molly declines.

Brooke’s father begins molesting Brooke shortly after her mother suffers an accident, and this escalates into sexual assault on a regular basis. Molly suffered a debilitating back injury at work, sending the family into financial turmoil and herself into depression. When Brooke is 12, she intuitively knows something is wrong with her home life and tries to take her younger sister, Kat, and run to their grandmother’s house. When they tell Molly that they’re leaving, she convinces them to stay, and days later, announces that the family is moving to Pennsylvania. There, Brooke makes new friends named Judd and Cristin. Brooke develops appendicitis and Cristin sees her through her recovery. While healing from surgery, Brooke is drugged and sexually assaulted by her father, and spends several days in excruciating pain. When Molly goes to the hospital for her own surgery, David sexually assaults Brooke again. One night, he throws a chair at his son Adam, and Brooke feels powerless to stop him.

In ninth grade, Brooke becomes a cheerleader. Doing so causes her to develop a hernia, and she has to rest for eight weeks post-surgery. Molly finds out she’s pregnant and asks Brooke to sell oxycontin at school. Brooke asks her friend Judd to help, and one night, she is held up and her bag of pills is stolen; Molly reacts angrily. Later, Brooke gets a job as a telemarketer and starts dating a schoolmate named Paul. When she goes to Paul’s house for dinner, she sees his younger brother spill some milk and panics, expecting Paul’s father to become violent. When nobody gets angry, Brooke realizes her own home life is unhealthy. Paul’s mother, Gina, starts to sense that something is wrong in Brooke’s life, but Brooke can’t bring herself to open up. Paul pressures Brooke to have sex, and when she gives in, he comments on how she doesn’t seem to be a virgin.

That summer, Brooke’s younger brother is born. The birth is difficult for her mother, and Molly almost dies after suffering severe blood loss. Molly spends a week in the hospital and is still recovering when she comes home; Brooke is tasked with taking care of the newborn and naming him. Brooke names the baby Ethan and develops a deep affection for him. Two months later, Brooke realizes she hasn’t had her period, and when she experiences severe blood loss that night, she believes she miscarried her father’s child. Feeling as if she has no way out, she resolves to end her own life using her mother’s pills. Before she takes them, she receives a phone call from Paul, and thinking of her siblings, flushes the pills down the toilet. Gina, Paul’s mother, decides to help Brooke and suggests she visit a free counseling clinic for women in crisis. In counseling, Brooke meets Midge, a counselor who teaches her how to identify and understand the abuse that her family has gone through. Midge gives Brooke a chart that explains each type of abuse, and Brooke realizes she has been sexually, emotionally, and economically abused. She keeps the chart under her pillow, using it as proof that her abuse is real. One night, her father finds the chart and destroys Brooke’s room. David almost attacks young Ethan, but Brooke steps in and is knocked backward with Ethan in her arms. Afterward, Brooke decides to report the abuse and makes an anonymous call to social services. She receives a visit from them at school but lies and says she dreamed up the abuse; she worries what might happen to her family if she tells the truth. Molly receives a letter stating David might be guilty of abuse, but Brooke denies it again. Paul breaks up with Brooke, and the case against her father is temporarily closed. Brooke then goes to Long Island, where her Aunt Jean and Uncle Bruce reveal that they have been talking to Molly and Gina, and are stepping in to protect Brooke and her siblings. Brooke goes back to Pennsylvania to help Gina create a police report, and Paul fakes empathy to have sex with Brooke. Brooke denies him, and he tells her that she’ll never be wanted. Later, Paul calls her disgusting and implies that she was a voluntary party to her abuse. Brooke and her family return to Long Island with her aunt and uncle to remain safe from David while the police investigate their case. A protection order is granted against David, and he is renamed “Earl” after a Dixie Chicks song about murdering an abusive husband.

After a few weeks in hiding, Brooke and her family go back to Pennsylvania. Brooke asks her mother to move into a new house, as she feels the old house will be too triggering. Molly dismisses the idea, and Brooke spends a few weeks having nightmares and regular panic attacks. Midge teaches Brooke about emancipation, and Brooke fools Molly into thinking she emancipated herself. She leaves with a suitcase and lives in her car while working at a local gym and staying with friends. One night, Brooke’s friend Cristin notices a boy named Jason staring at Brooke and tries to set them up. The attempt falls through, but Brooke and Jason soon come together on their own terms and fall deeply in love. The court process begins, and Brooke details her abuse in court with her father present. She shares her past with Jason, assuming he will react like Paul did, but Jason assures Brooke that he will always love her. He tells her that what happened to her does not define her, that her past is not who she is. As the court process continues, Earl pleads not guilty, and Brooke is accepted into Penn State. She asks Jason to move with her, and the two take a trip with Jason's mother to Canada, where Jason proposes under a waterfall. Molly hates the thought of Brooke leaving, and Brooke's sense of responsibility toward her family leads her to continue sending money even after she moves. She begins to wonder if Molly always knew about Earl’s abuse and simply never spoke up about it. Later, Brooke learns that Midge is moving to Colorado. Before Midge leaves, she shares her own story of abuse with Brooke, and tells Brooke how lucky she is to have support.

On the day of the trial, Brooke tells her story. She is questioned about her grades being high while being abused, with the school visit by social services being used to paint her as a liar. Brooke's lawyer attempts to reverse the damage, but the jury is unable to reach a decision. Gina tells Brooke that they will need to do another trial. Brooke spends days in bed, threatens to leave Jason, and finds out that her brother Thomas was also sexually assaulted by Earl. This information inspires Brooke to go back to trial. During the second trial, Brooke feels more confident, and tells her story without faltering. She states her desire to prevent Earl from hurting anyone else and proves that her grades were high because studying was a coping strategy. Earl is found guilty of every charge, including rape, incest, and corruption of a minor. During the waiting period to find out the length of Earl's sentence, Brooke gathers victim statements from 25 people. Brooke's statement speaks of her stolen childhood and the control that Earl had over every aspect of her family’s lives. Earl is given the maximum sentence, and afterward, Brooke is handed another victim statement from someone in the family who was abused by Earl many times in his youth, and whose story was vindicated through Brooke. Brooke feels as though her experiences made her who she is and doesn't regret anything. However, she realizes that her family is not healing the way she is, that her siblings seem to be heading down dark paths. Midge assures her that her family was already this way, but without Earl clouding her vision, it has become easier to see.

At Penn State, Brooke learns about resilience and how intelligence, social support, and goals all help children be resilient against abuse. She soon becomes pregnant and suffers a miscarriage, and takes two months to grieve the loss. She and Jason then move back to the town she grew up in, and Brooke applies to work at the Women’s Crisis Center that saved her life. She is hired almost instantly, and even finds closure with Paul. Brooke is given the opportunity to make a speech for a domestic abuse policy-making group full of high-profile figures. She tells her story of abuse and survival, about how important it is to teach children about healthy relationships and signs of abuse, and how she believes that men are equally survivors of sexual abuse. She presses the issue of sensitivity toward survivors, particularly on the part of social services and law enforcement. Months later, Brooke is pregnant with twins and Gina continues to act as the mother she never had. Midge ended up dying of cancer, but not before leaving Brooke with advice about maintaining control of her life, and some money to take time to write a memoir. The memoir concludes as Brooke begins writing a letter to Earl.