Summary from GoodReads: Alone in an unlocked house in a safe neighborhood in the suburban town of Concord, MA, two obedient, good girls, Jessica Stern, 15, and her sister, 14, were raped on the night of October 1, 1973. When they reported the crime, the police were skeptical. Their father, away on business, did not return for three more days.
Following the example of her family, Stern—who lost her mother at the age of three—denied her pain and kept striving to achieve. But while her career took off, her success hinged on her symptoms. After her ordeal, she could not feel fear in normally frightening situations. Stern thought she’d disassociated from the trauma altogether, until a request took her back to that night more than 30 years earlier.
The world-class social scientist and expert on terrorism and post-traumatic stress disorder began her own investigation, with the help of a devoted police lieutenant, to find the truth about her rapist, the town of Concord, her own family, and her own mind. The result is Denial, a candid and deeply intimate look at a life, a trauma, and its aftermath.
My Review: This book becomes a chilling memoir of a childhood rape and the internal effects it has on someone while they seemingly look just fine on the outside. This shows the *real* view of an incident defining someone's life and making them start researching and becoming an authority, so to speak, on the thing that they want to forget.
Where she feels the police failed, she picked up. She investigated her own rape, went through her own documents and reports to try to find the answers. She tells all in a no holds barred way.
This is not a book that you can say that you enjoy. It is one I really recommend reading though. This allows others a look at PTSD and how someone may look on the outside as opposed to what they are feeling on the inside.
Where she feels the police failed, she picked up. She investigated her own rape, went through her own documents and reports to try to find the answers. She tells all in a no holds barred way.
This is not a book that you can say that you enjoy. It is one I really recommend reading though. This allows others a look at PTSD and how someone may look on the outside as opposed to what they are feeling on the inside.
RATING: ♥♥♥♥
Pages: 300
Hardcover
Review copy of this book won on another book blog contest. In no way did the provision of the book affect the outcome of my review.
.jpg)
You know I read a lot of true crime. The human psychology aspect fascinates me - the motivation, methods, back stories, skewed views of the world - there is so much involved. Yet as in this book, sometimes poor police work, or good police work that is thwarted by departmental lack of cooperation or politics or so many factors keep a crime from being solved or a criminal caught.
ReplyDeleteProbably why I will be featuring more this year in Madame Perry's Salon; so people will learn to keep their eyes and ears open, not to be afraid but to be aware.