Howard Books - Dancing for the Devil: One Woman’s Dramatic and Divine Rescue from the Sex Industry

PRAISE FOR DANCING FOR THE DEVIL

Grace is what kept us connected to our daughter and allowed us never to give up hope for Anny while she was in the darkest places of the sex industry. Grace is what kept our daughter alive, and grace is what pulled her out of the sex-for-sale culture. Although it was excruciatingly painful to witness our child in the sex industry, it has led her to her purposes in this life of teaching, advocating, and sharing the same grace that restored her with women across the globe. Her courage to tell her story in this book and the grace she imparts to others continue to inspire us.

Retired NCAA head basketball coach Bob Donewald and his wife, Kathy

Dancing For The Devil is not just a pole-to-the-pulpit memoir, but a call to action about how the billion-dollar sex-for-sale industry in America is impacting our culture. Anny Donewald and her coauthor Carrie Gerlach Cecil grippingly and beautifully illustrate how one woman went from a life of privilege to surviving the underbelly of the sex industry and ultimately advocating Gods grace in places others dont dare to venture.

Brian Head Welch, guitarist with Love and Death, formerly of Korn, and New York Times bestselling author of Save Me from Myself

Dancing for the Devil is a heartbreaking yet powerful memoir about Anny Donewalds incredible journey that takes her from a seemingly perfect life to the darkest realms of the sex industry. Her co-author Carrie Gerlach Cecil brilliantly recounts the confronting details of how Anny came from brokenness and darkness into a life of beauty and freedom through the redemptive power of Jesus. You wont be able to put this book down.

Henry and Alex Seeley, founders of The Belonging Co.

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This book is dedicated to Jesus Christ, who decided to befriend an atheist just to show her He loved her.

And to my mother. Thank you for your consistent love and support and your familiar words, Its all good. I strive to be half the woman and mother you are, not only to my own children but also to the thousands of women God sends my way from the pits of darkness. You showed me what God meant when He said love never gives up.
(1 Corinthians 13, paraphrased)

Through God and my mother I learned that love is the answer. His love can and does change the darkest of hearts.

I want to tell my story with gut-wrenching honesty, so that other women and men may find encouragement and hope in these pages and recognize that no one is too far gone to be healed by Gods love. What I learned on my journey from the sex industry to the pulpit was that I was never meant to dance for the devilwhether that was in sexual, political, or religious cultures. This is what I know to be true: Jesus Christ does not want us to sugarcoat his best stories of redemption to pacify man.

Tell your stories, and tell them openly.

Anny Donewald, daughter of an NCAA basketball head coach, sex industry survivor, founder of Eves Angels

The names and identifying characteristics of everyone with the exception of family and known celebrities in this book have been changed to protect the guilty and the innocent. Changes were made for legal and safety concerns surrounding the people in the book, my family, and myself. While all the described actions and incidents are true, there are particular events that have been combined and condensed to maintain continuity in the story. The situations described remain accurate and true to the actual events that took place, to the very best of my memory.

Graphic descriptions of what goes on in the sex industry, as well as the explicit language of that world, have been omitted at the request of the publisher.

Over the years many people had approached me about writing a book or movie about my life. The answer was always the same, No, thank you. I had zero desire to write my memoir, as for years I was not willing to disclose elements of my childhood that had not completely healed. I was still keeping a mental file marked Secrets .

But God had other plans, and they included a writer He had already chosen for me. Her name is Carrie Gerlach Cecil. She and I share a love of sports, God, and the Holy Spirit, and a passion to love and to restore the heartbroken. A writer and speaker, she is also my cousin.

In 2011, I began praying with Carrie as she plotted her public relations tour to promote her upcoming novel, One Sunday . One particular evening I prophesied over her that One Sunday would be an incredible gift to many when it was published, but it would be her next book that would change lives.

Over the next two years my relationship with my cousin blossomed as I traveled down my path, unlocking and healing my childhood. I would feverishly pray for understanding, and then one afternoon in May, I felt inspired and called Carrie and asked if she would help me write my memoir.

All of it? she questioned. She knew my reluctance to share my past and openly discuss my childhood and my very private family. Are you sure?

All of it, I said.

What I was sure of was that God has an incredible sense of irony and timing, and there is no one that I trusted more both as writer and as confidant to help me tell my truths than I trusted Carrie. Together we would find a way to share what was important to my story: none of us need to cover up the very pitchfork that threw us into a psychological and physical mind-set of shame or pain or darkness. And no matter what walk of life you come from, evil knows no boundaries. But most important, there is no darkness that Gods love cannot reach and restore to its perfect state.

Love you, cousin, she said to me as she hung up.

Love you back, cousin, I repeated.

Little did Carrie know that after years of encouraging me to address and tell my whole story, she would be the one helping me to tell it in this memoir. And interestingly, the book that I prophesied over her two years prior, her next book that would change lives, is this book.

Its been an amazing, therapeutic, painful, and spectacular process. And we are just getting started. Stay tuned.

Chicago, Illinois

May 2014

I never knew my cousin growing up. My mother and her father have been estranged, with only pockets of exchanges, for over thirty years. I had heard stories of Anny, but not the kind of stories you want repeated about you. She was an anomaly to me, as she grew up with everything that I didnt. A stay-at-home mother and a father who was a successful NCAA head basketball coach who remained faithful and present for his wife and children. She had money for private schools, designer clothes, and the college of her choice, so it was a mystery to me how such a blessed girl became one of the highest-paid strippers and prostitutes in Michigan, Chicago, and Las Vegas. More miraculous to me was how the ex-stripper had gone from the pole to the pulpit.

As clich as it sounds, Anny and I found each other through social media, and with cautious optimism we began to slowly divulge our lives to each other. I had an incredible empathy for her, as my own youth had been riddled with shards of shame and secrets as well as joy and love. Today I consider myself to be a work-in-faith-progress, a galaxy away from being anywhere near complete. What connected Anny and me was not our shared DNA but rather our passion for Jesus Christ and a hunger to love and serve broken people.