New memoir · 2026
Secrets Are Out Now
How a Girl Overcomes the World. Published 13 May 2026 by Brookscraft Publishing.
What it covers
Everything she was told to keep quiet
It begins before she did: a mother in Detroit who did not want the pregnancy and tried to end it. She was born anyway, and orphaned at six months. A German family adopted her.
From there the book moves through the assault at sixteen, eleven marriages, and a dancing career that started around the age of thirty — including an appearance in the film Porky's and a season singing with Beverly Sills at the Palm Beach Opera.
It ends where she is now: eighty-three, living a better life, and finally writing it all down.
Publication details
The record, for the record
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Nobody kept my secrets for me. So I stopped asking them to.
Crystal Gellata
Inside the book
Six things it does not avoid
An unwanted birth
Told plainly, from the beginning, without asking the reader to feel a particular way about it.
Adoption at six months
Orphaned and then taken in by a German family — and what that did to her sense of where she came from.
Sixteen
The assault, recounted without detail for its own sake and without pretending it did not happen.
Eleven marriages
Neither defended nor explained away. She simply sets them down in order.
A late start on stage
Dancing from around thirty, Porky's, and singing with Beverly Sills at the Palm Beach Opera.
Eighty-three, and better
The ending is not a twist. She is still here, and the life is a good one now.
Out now
The secrets are out. You may as well read them.
Published 13 May 2026 by Brookscraft Publishing. ISBN 978-1-9696-8262-9.