CRYING WOLF

A Memoir.

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Finalist for the 2024 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Nonfiction

It’s a tale as old as time. Girl meets boy. Boy wants girl. Girl says no.
Boy takes what he wants anyway.

After a violent sexual assault, Eden Boudreau was faced with a choice: call the police and explain that a man who wasn’t her husband, who she had agreed to go on a date with, had just raped her. Or go home and pray that, in the morning, it would be only a nightmare.

In the years that followed, Eden was met with disbelief by strangers, friends, and the authorities, often as a result of stigma towards her non-monogamy, sex positivity, and bisexuality. Societal conditioning of acceptable female sexuality silenced her to a point of despair, leading to addiction and even attempted suicide. It was through the act of writing that she began to heal.

Crying Wolf is a gripping memoir that shares the raw path to recovery after violence and spotlights the ways survivors are too often demonized or ignored when they belong to marginalized communities. Boudreau heralds a new era for others dismissed for “crying wolf.” After all, women prevailing to change society for others is also a tale as old as time.

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“I wasn’t cheating on my husband.” I sat up and swivelled toward her, begging for her full attention. “I wasn’t cheating. I know it sounds like it, but I wasn’t. This was a date. My husband and I have a different arrangement. Not arrangement… that sounds bad.” I balled my hands up and tried a different approach. “We are polyamorous. It’s a form of non-monogamy, like an open marriage, but not really. It’s not just about sex; it’s more than that.” I was rambling again, and I worried that I was losing her. I didn’t know much, but I knew I desperately wanted her on my team. We stared at each other in silence for an uncomfortable amount of time.”

— Excerpt from Crying Wolf: A Memoir

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Praise for Crying Wolf

“Crying Wolf is a phoenix rising from the ash of Boudreau’s pain. In her stunning and eloquent debut, Boudreau takes readers on a harrowing journey through some of her darkest days, while holding a mirror to a society that perpetuates the shaming of those who live in the margins. Readers will close Crying Wolf with a sense of having been changed by the story of healing and returning to oneself, but most of all, will find themselves hopeful for the future.”

— Kelly S. Thompson, bestselling author of Girls Need Not Apply and Still, I Cannot Save You

“Crying Wolf is one of those books that will forever stay with me. It’s an intimate portrayal of survival, a tender vignette of marriage, and a rallying cry that we are the shepherds and we will guard our flock against the wolf. That we will be messy, we will be flawed, and we will be powerful. All I can say is, thank you, Boudreau, for telling your story when so many survivors aren’t ready to tell their own.”

— KJ Aiello, award-winning author of The Monster and The Mirror

“Boudreau is a hugely talented writer, unflinching. She painstakingly explains why so many women remain silent, or choose not to put themselves through the secondary assault of trying for a conviction against their assailant. Thankfully, both for Boudreau and the reader, she recounts, too, the journey toward healing: not being healed, as that’s not a conclusive thing, but embracing “the choice to move forward.”

— Charlene Carr, author of Hold My Girl and We Rip The World Apart

“People are quick to question what a victim was wearing, where she was going, how much she had been drinking, always putting the onus on the women who was assaulted as opposed to the person who actually attacked her. When I read that Eden Boudreau’s book, Crying Wolf, explores her own struggle to seek justice due to the nature of her polyamorous marriage, I knew that hers was a story that I wanted to share with as many people as possible.”

— Bianca Marais, bestselling author of A Most Puzzling Murder and Hum If You Don't Know the Words

“Boudreau’s debut memoir is a searing and unflinching record of the assault and aftermath of sexual violence. Admirers of Alice Sebold and Sarah Polley should make room on their shelf for this evocative account of rape by a third partner within a polyamorous marriage—and the internal and systemic wounds which occur as a result. With her incisive wit, heartbreaking insight, and riveting storytelling, Boudreau has earned my admiration as both a talented writer and a steadfast survivor.”

— Amber Cowie, author of Last One Alive

“Boudreau’s early passion for writing and reading turned out to be key to her recovery. On the advice of her therapist, she took up her pen and joined a writing retreat with a literary idol. In the end, she weighed the potential shame of going public with a trial against taking charge of her own story and how it would be told. Crying Wolf is the result of that choice: a battle cry for women who have survived assault.”

— Foreword Reviews