Private Hell, a semi-autobiographical crime novel, deals with domestic abuse. While written as a work of fiction, the story within the story truthfully depicts the author's life from childhood through her escape from a first marriage that nearly took her life.
Longevity was a birthright in Diana Ciccone’s family. All of the women on her mother’s side lived to be 100 years old. Diana believed her life ran in 25 year cycles. The first 25 years were hell on earth. A dysfunctional childhood and an abusive first marriage had left her physically and emotionally scarred. Then, quite by chance, she met the man who would give her a chance for real happiness, and the next 25 years were “… heavenly.” Now, 16 years into the third quarter of her life, she found herself back at the gates of hell… and Satan looked a lot like her ex-husband. She was beginning to wonder if what she called life was actually death and she just didn’t know it. With Satan’s domain threatening to become her permanent place of residence, drastic measures were required. Diana hired high-priced attorney Claudia Allerd and private investigator Angus Caruthers in the hope they could keep her from falling into the pit of eternal flames. With their help, she discovered that the evil one knows is surprisingly different from the evil they don’t know. She also learned that heaven and hell are the same place. Sometimes people are in one. Sometimes they are in the other. No one leaves this plane of existence without having visited both.
