These Broken Roads

In this gripping and honest memoir, Jamaicanimmigrant Donna Marie Hayes recounts how at the peak of her American success inNew York City, she is scammed and robbed of her life s savings by the love ofher life met on an online dating site and how she vindicates herself toovercome a lifetime of bad choices.Donna Hayes had fortitude and smarts. She d already survived so much. Atthe top of her game, thriving in New York City no less, her career was soaringon Wall Street and she was starring in her own one woman show off Broadway. Tobe scammed by a man she had met on a dating app, someone she thought she wouldmarry, shocked and shamed her. This wasn t the way it was supposed to be. InJamaica as a child, death had come for Hayes three times. Each time shesurvived it and her beloved grandma reminded her that God had her back, thatshe was destined for greatness.Yet, in thepoverty and loneliness of her childhood, it was hard to believe. Every day shedreamed of going to America and joining her birth family, never understandingwhy she had been left behind. When she was 14, her mother finally sent forher. Donna selation was soon offset by the challenges of her new life. From hermother s strict church to an early marriage, single motherhood, and a seconddisastrous and abusive marriage, when Donna finally escaped, she vowed to neveragain subject herself to relationships and people who harmed her. And for thenext eight years, she kept that vow. Then Hayes metthe man of her dreams, Javier De Leon, on a dating website and they becameinseparable. Before long, their love undeniable, he proposed and tattooed herinitials in large bold letters across his chest. But 18 months and $177,000later, it all fell apart. Hayes learned that she had been a target from thebeginning, the victim of a romance/real estate scam perpetrated by a careercriminal and ex-con from The Bronx. Suddenly, her financial independence was atrisk and so was her ability to trust herself. This is thestory of how that woman rose yet again to find her power, making the scam andher choice of De Leon the last run along the broken roads of her past.