book-review

Just last week, I typed the final words I’ve been working toward for years: The Pace of Nature is finished. The last round of edits is done, and the manuscript is now officially out in the world.

I’ve started submitting to agents. I’m giving the traditional route six months. I’m giving the traditional publishing route one more shot. I’ve worked hard for this, I’m a professional writer with a degree in writing, and it’s always been my dream to be traditionally published. To see my book on shelves. To hold it in my hands and know I earned my place there.

But I also want to be honest: if the traditional path doesn’t land where it needs to, I’m prepared to self-publish, and to do it with intention, not as a last resort.

That means I’m currently deep-diving into what it takes to publish a book independently the right way:

Building a target audience
Growing an email list
Preparing a book launch strategy
Researching book marketing and PR
Identifying who I want to work with when it’s time for a campaign

If I self-publish, it will be professional, strategic, and fully backed by a marketing plan, not a “throw it online and hope” situation.

Who This Book Is For

The Pace of Nature will resonate with people who know what it means to survive something, and still be learning how to live afterward.

It will appeal to:

Survivors of reform and boarding schools
Individuals who have experienced trauma and are seeking a story of healing and resilience
Mothers struggling to connect with their teens
Teens who feel misunderstood or disconnected from their parents
Parents raising children with disabilities
Young people with learning challenges who need encouragement and representation
Readers drawn to stories of emotional endurance, redemption, and self-discovery

Help Me Build This Community

As I move into this next phase, I’m starting to build my email list. This will be the main space where I share monthly updates, behind-the-scenes insights, early release news, and eventually, launch details.

If you’d like to follow along and be part of this from the beginning, send your email to:

BrittDiGiacomo@gmail.com

I’d love to have you along for the journey.

Below is the pitch I’m currently sending to agents and editors. If the story speaks to you, keep reading. There’s so much more coming. Thanks for the support!!

The Pace of Nature

At seven, Lilly thought the hardest thing she’d ever have to overcome was the accident and her brain injury. Little did she know that at sixteen she would face an even greater challenge: the daily humiliations, forced confessions, and psychological games at Forge Academy, a “therapeutic” boarding school that pulls parents into its system just as tightly as it controls their children.

At home, Lilly’s life spirals between shame and self-punishment. Haunted by her mother’s constant reminders of the accident, she lashes out at classmates, breaks things in anger, and ends up in the hospital after one of her worst episodes. Her body heals, but her self-worth doesn’t.

Lilly is desperate to change, to become someone her family could believe in again. But Forge thrives on punishment disguised as progress. Classes are canceled for group shaming. Students stand for hours in the Arena of Shame. Meals are withheld. Every breath is a test of obedience.

Burdened by the learning difficulties that have always made her feel behind, Lilly fights to stay afloat in a place designed to break her. Then she meets Meisha, a gifted pianist whose talent and quiet confidence awaken something in her, a reminder that beauty can exist even in captivity. Shauna, her sharp-witted roommate, becomes both a lifeline and a mirror, showing Lilly what strength looks like under constant control. And Nora, the rule follower who betrays her in the worst way, teaches her how fragile trust can be.

But just as Lilly begins to rebuild her sense of self, she’s forced to choose between protecting her progress and protecting a friend. What follows is a reckoning with loyalty and the quiet courage it takes to save yourself without abandoning the people who shaped you.

The Pace of Nature is a tense, emotionally charged story about resilience, first love, and the brutal systems that call themselves your savior. Inspired by true events from my life as a former student of Hyde School, a boarding school that claimed to help troubled teens but is now facing a lawsuit for emotional and physical abuse, this story was born from what I witnessed and survived.

This summer, Hyde Boarding School in Bath, Maine was hit with a federal class-action lawsuit, one that echoes what many of us have known for years.

The suit, Fuller v. Hyde School, alleges forced child labor, emotional abuse, and coercive practices masked as “character development.” Since its filing, dozens of alumni have come forward with similar stories. I’m one of them.

I attended Hyde School’s Woodstock, Connecticut campus for three and a half years. While parts of the experience, particularly family therapy, brought growth, one aspect of Hyde’s culture never left me: the brutal enforcement of “Brother’s Keeper.”

On the surface, Brother’s Keeper sounds like integrity, students holding each other accountable. But in practice, it created a hierarchy of informants and interrogators. The system rewarded betrayal, punished privacy, and manufactured fear.

Here’s how it worked: one student breaks a rule. Another reports them. Then the Dean’s Area begins its sweep. Students are pulled into rooms and pressured to confess, name names, expose anyone else who might be “dirty.”

This wasn’t accountability. It was emotional warfare.

Sometimes it ended in full “school busts,” ritualistic spectacles where students were called on stage and forced to confess humiliating details, often about sex or drugs, in front of the entire school body. Later, the Dean would probe deeper in private, asking graphic, invasive questions under the guise of “support.”

If your name came up, your parents were called immediately. You were labeled untrustworthy. Not ready. A failure. And if you didn’t “come clean” fast enough, you were manipulated into believing you were hiding something. That you were sick. That you weren’t safe to be let out into the world.

Some students were held back a year, despite passing grades and completed credits, because Hyde didn’t believe they were “ready.” Anywhere else, they would have graduated. At Hyde, they lost a year of their lives, and their families lost another year of tuition, all because they broke a rule and failed to confess soon enough.

At Hyde, you weren’t measured by your growth, your grades, or your honesty over time. You were measured by your submission.

If you protected a friend, you were dishonest. If you kept something private, you were manipulative. If you didn’t collapse and rebuild yourself publicly, you weren’t ready.

The culture didn’t just fracture friendships. It severed our sense of self. It taught us that loyalty to the institution mattered more than loyalty to ourselves. That humiliation was a necessary step toward redemption. That our mistakes were more defining than our progress.

I remember gripping my seat during a senior-year bust while a girl on stage sobbed through a confession that never should have been public. I stared at the floor, praying I wouldn’t be next.

I was terrified. Afraid of what my family would think. That everything I had done to change, to earn back their trust, would be erased. I was terrified they’d believe Hyde over me. That they’d see me as a failure again. That they wouldn’t let me come back home.

What Hyde called “character” was just control.

Hyde didn’t break me. If anything, it made me tougher, but at a cost. I didn’t leave feeling weak or insecure. I left guarded. Wary. I learned to flinch before trusting, to scan for danger before connection. I see the bad in people before I see the good. And it takes time, sometimes too long, to believe someone is safe. To believe that I am.

Since I started speaking out, I’ve heard from dozens of alumni with similar stories, many just beginning to untangle what happened to them.

I’ve spent the last decade writing a novel about my experiences at Hyde, titled The Pace of Nature. It’s currently in submission for publication. The story explores how I ended up at Hyde, what happened there, and the long road to reclaiming my identity. Starting this month, I’ll be sharing updates as the journey unfolds.

To Hyde, I say this: the world doesn’t need more control dressed as character. It needs healing. Accountability. And the kind of strength that doesn’t rely on fear.

Tag: book-review

The Pace of Nature is finished!

The Hidden Harm of ‘Brother’s Keeper’ at Hyde School, by Britt DiGiacomo published by Hearst Media, appeared in print in The Norwalk Hour 8/3/25.