The Circle Broken

Dorothy Carvello

May 2024 · Regalo Press

About this ebook

Cee Cee Porter came to Nashville as a young woman with a handful of love songs she’d written for her husband, Bucky, and a dream of joining the ranks of country music queens. After one of the songs became a hit, Bucky convinced her to trade her career for a family. Meanwhile, he founded DMG Records and became a major power player in Nashville.

Now their marriage is falling apart. Like a good, Southern, Christian woman, Cee Cee does everything she can to save it. But when Bucky signs the young Australian phenomenon Michael Jennings, Cee Cee’s world is upended. As she tries to create a life above Nashville’s hypocritical moral stricture, she is menaced at every turn.

A fast-paced, complex, true-to-life story, The Circle Broken captures what it’s really like to be in the music business: the fame, the debauchery, the manipulation, and the duplicity. It is a dramatic exploration of the psychology of money and power, illuminating the struggle of women trying to rise in a male-dominated world. Most importantly, it is a story about identity and about how trauma is passed from generation to generation, like a song no one can stop singing. Can the circle ever be broken?

About the author

Dorothy Carvello is the author of Anything for a Hit: An A&R Woman’s Story of Surviving the Music Industry. Her book was reviewed by the New York Times, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly. She is from and still lives in New York City. She is a graduate of Marymount Manhattan College.