Donna Marie Hayes

One woman’s story, every woman’s nightmare. Donna Marie Hayes had a fortitude and smarts. She already survived so much. In this gripping memoir, Donna Hayes recounts the story of her impoverished Jamaican childhood and eventual immigration to the United States at 14. She faced many hardships, including a strict church upbringing, family abandonment, and marriages marked by domestic violence. She eventually broke free as a single mother. Decades later, Donna is educated and successful in New York City. She is a rising star on Wall Street and has her own one-woman show off Broadway. However, at the peak of her success, she is scammed and robbed of her life savings by a man she meets on an online dating site. The scammer was not the typical faceless online fraudster. He was someone who Donna had met in person and slept beside for a year and a half. He pretended to be the love of her life, but he was actually a con artist who had been planning to steal from her from the start. This is the story of how Donna found the strength to overcome this setback and rebuild her life. She refused to let the scammer define her, and she emerged from this experience even stronger than before.