"Poor did not mean you didn't have water for three months at a stretch." Riley said. "Poor meant you ate macaroni and cheese and beans and rice. But you bought it yourself."

"When I became pathetically poor I saw just how rich Americans really were."

Without enough water to drink, cook and clean for months at a time. Riley hit bottom. It is this period of her life that she writes about in "Spread the Peanut Butter Thin!," an initmate confession detailing her family's breaking points and the events leading up to her most trying times.

Riley began writing her emotionally charged memoir in 2004 shortly after her family's three year ordeal came to an end.

"That was the best time to write this book. It's raw and all the emotions are still there." Riley said. "There were parts when there was bitterness when we were going through it. There was anger . . . we'd just gotten out of it."

Riley originally preserved her story for her family, so that her two children could read it in the future and be reminded of what tough times really were. After completing "Spread the Peanut Butter Thin!" two years later, though. Riley was expended too much effort not to try getting it published, but she feared a publisher might distort her story in the editing process.

"A lot of other publishers, they take a book and do what they want with it and then it's not your story." Riley explained. "This is my life I'm talking about and I don't want them changing adjectives. Those adjectives are how we felt."

She eventually found a publisher whose changes would be minimal primarily grammatical. Riley notes that her book may lack a certain polish but is brutally honest with feelings and attitudes.

"It's very personal and very on the line and if people read it and don't like me anymore then, hey, that's fine." Riley explained. "It's very risque and very adult. It's real. It's my life and so I wrote it down."

Riley begins her story by warning her fellow Chistians who choose to read her words. Without having experienced the pain her family endured, she wonders how she will be judged but refuses to apologize.

If anything, I thought God hated me at that point. Look at my situation. I was the furthest thing from Christian that you could think of at that point."

Thoughout the book, the Rileys battle an unforgiving ecomony, a deteriorating home and automoble, extended family members and themselves. "Spread the Peanut Butter Thin!" is a "memoir of pain" and a story of survival.

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With water flowing once more and repaired roof that no longer drips. Riley's worried mind can rest.

"Now I can look back at it as history."

Her family's past struggles however, will come to mind for years to come. Christmas shopping is still a novelty and the thought of others struggling can not be ignored.

"The shows on TV where they're asking for money for third world countries. It isn't that I didn't care or give before, but now it's personal. They talk about this village not having water. I know what that's like . . . and now I see those shows on TV and it hits too close to home. It's not even in Africa, it's us. We've done that."

The book is slowly gaining recognition and can be found online as well as in local book shops in Taylorville and Springfield. Riley said she has been contacted by various reviewers, a university publisher in the United Kingdom and a Chistian orgainization affiliated with Dr. James Dobson.

"Our story is the story of a lot of people, it just so happens that I write the book."

Riley hopes to follow "Spread the Peanut Butter Thin!" with a change of pace. She's currently working on a children's book and hopes to write an entertaining novel based on the Bible's take of the UFO phenomenon.

Reprinted with the Permission of the Breeze Courier of Taylorville, IL