Wide Open begins with the start of a promising relationship. As D. M. Ditson falls in love, she is forced to confront her past: a fundamentalist Christian upbringing, family secrets, and a series of men who sexually assaulted her when she was between the ages of eighteen and twenty five. One of the assaults was so devastating that it left her showering in her sleep, trying in vain to wash the darkness away.

D. M. Ditson's story is a raw and emotional account of how she became so vulnerable to assault, of the depths to which she fell, and of her excruciating recovery from post-traumatic stress disorder.