Instead, she finds pleasure in tormenting Julie, a friend of Murdoch.

Nikki and Rob eventually end up in jail.Īfter she gets out of jail, she recklessly drives in search of Murdoch. Nikki is angry and sends a man called Rob to brutalize Murdoch. Murdoch gets a restraining order against Nikki for constantly following and stalking him. She wants to call the Social Services and report Murdoch for abuse. Nikki is enraged and tries to blame it on Murdoch. Nikki begins to date Murdoch, but eventually they break up. Meanwhile, the first act of abuse that is shown in the book comes when Nikki throws Portuguese Seafood Paella at Matthew after Nikki finds Murdoch's address that Callie found on the Internet. Matthew and Callie like Murdoch, and both of them want to track him down so that they can be his friend. They see Murdoch for the first time, protecting a kid from being openly abused. Callie and Matthew go to the Cumberland Farms store to get popsicles because there is a heatwave in the town in which they live. Callie is eleven, Matthew is thirteen, and Emmy is a toddler.

The real story starts with Matthew and his other younger sister, Callie. The book starts out with an introduction when Matthew Walsh is writing a letter to his younger sister Emmy to tell her the story of their mother's vicious abuse. It also received recognition as a 2007 Best Book for Young Adults from the American Library Association.

This book was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. It depicts the story of a boy and his two siblings trying to survive vicious emotional and physical abuse by their mother, Nikki. The Rules of Survival is a 2006 novel written by Nancy Werlin.

The rules of survival by nancy werlin