Incest

The Dollanganger children have no reason to believe there is anything amiss with their parents' relationship. As far as they know, their parents are madly in love with one another and nothing bad could possibly happen. However, after their father is killed in a car accident, the children are placed in a second story room at Foxworth Hall, where they learn from a grandmother they never knew they had that their father is actually their mother's half-uncle. By marrying her husband, their mother has committed incest. This incest causes her parents, deeply religious people, to believe that the pairing is doomed and that the children will go to Hell for their actions. For this reason, the Dollanganger children also learn that Dollanganger is not their true last name, but the name of an ancestor their father chose to use when he and the children's mother ran away to...