In a memoir hailed for its searing candor and wit, Alice Sebold reveals how her life was utterly transformed when, as an eighteen-year-old college freshman, she was brutally raped ad beaten in a park near campus. What propels this chronicle of her recovery is Sebold's indomitable spirit - as she struggles for understanding ("After telling the hard facts to anyone, from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes"), as her dazed family and friends sometimes bungle their efforts to provide comfort and support; and as, ultimately, she triumphs, managing through grit and coincidence to help secure her attacker's arrest and conviction. In a narrative by turns disturbing, thrilling, and inspiring. Alice Sebold illuminates the experience of trauma victims even as she imparts wisdom profoundly hardwon: "You save yourself or you remain unsaved."

Author Biography

Alice Sebold lives in California with her husband, the writer Glen David Gold. She is the author of the critically acclaimed bestselling novel The Lovely Bones.