Review by New York Times Review
LIKE A COMMON VIRUS, the experience of rape invades not only the body but the mind of its victims, and it can do so in startlingly similar ways. Dissociation kicks in, mercifully and efficiently, almost like a response of the immune system, as well as a twisted, desperate desire on the part of the victim to please the rapist, in the desperate hope of a quicker conclusion, a better chance for survival. And yet, while these reactions appear to be almost universal, their emotional wake is intensely personal, possessing - at times obsessing - each individual in a unique way. Consider, for example, these two memoirs, which explore the 20-year aftermath of being raped by a stranger. "Jane Doe January," by the crime novelist Emily Winslow, chronicles in relentless detail the drama of the justice system's attempt to indict her rapist after matching DNA evidence is finally secured. Her story reveals a stark, maddening reality: that rape victims must often become their own legal advocates if they want an opportunity for retribution. In Winslow's case, this required more than 20 years of persistent inquiry before the scattered legal and forensic components of her 1992 rape coalesced into something the police and prosecutors were able to pursue. During her junior year at Carnegie Mellon University, Winslow was sexually assaulted by a man who followed her into her apartment building. Less than a year later, a man raped another young woman in the same Pittsburgh neighborhood; thus the two victims became Jane Doe January and Jane Doe November. In the decades that followed, Winslow would encounter a revolving door of detectives, reacquainting them with her case, keeping it alive mostly through her own persistence. By pure luck, a friend of the second victim reached an aggressive detective, who was able to match the DNA sample in the women's evidence kits to a man named Arthur Fryar. Fryar had also been convicted of rape in the 1970s, but it was a 2002 drug conviction that put his DNA into the system. By the time Winslow learns this, she is living in Cambridge, England, now happily married and the mother of two sons. As she assembles a detailed composite of the rapist's legal profile, she returns again and again to the same official documents. Yet she is wary of researching Fryar's personal life, content with surface-skimming Google searches and speculation drawn from the Facebook pages of his sister and his supposed girlfriend. Surprisingly, given Winslow's career writing crime fiction, there's nothing novelistic about the way this memoir unfolds. The detectives and prosecutors who emerge as significant supporting characters are given scant descriptions. Settings are all but invisible. Instead, the focus is on the finer points of law enforcement procedure, with every excruciating moment of the process painstakingly recounted. While much of this is bureaucratic, even tedious, Winslow attempts to inject drama with explosive bits of dialogue and many short, declarative stand-alone sentences, a device repeated to diminishing effect. Eventually, the judicial bureaucracy begins to seem almost as destructive as the rapist. Winslow must confront issues like extradition, statutory limits and sentencing guidelines. She must endure lab tests and postponements of the legal proceedings. During all this, she must go through the motions of her daily life in England. She fixates on what she should wear at the trial, how tightly she should try to harness her emotions, how she might be judged as a victim: "Being angry was appropriate. A jury, though, or a more formal judge, is more likely to reward sadness in a victim and disapprove of anger." Winslow channels her rage into this meticulously constructed and ultimately terrifying memoir. In the end, writing it proves a necessary release since the proceedings hit a roadblock: A Supreme Court decision overrides the Pennsylvania law on extending the statute of limitations, and the rape charges are withdrawn. Arthur Fryar is a free man. IN "I WILL FIND YOU," Joanna Connors, a reporter for The Cleveland Plain Dealer with a college-age daughter, embarks on a quest to understand the man who raped her two decades earlier, a crime she had never discussed with her children. Using her journalistic skills, she sets out to investigate the world that produced a man capable of such an act. The result is a searing narrative that plumbs both emotional and political depths. Like Winslow, Joanna Connors is a white woman raped by a black man, but this fact, largely ignored in Winslow's memoir, becomes a point of serious moral and political inquiry in Connors's "I Will Find You." In July 1984, Connors, then a drama critic for The Plain Dealer, walked into an empty theater on the Case Western Reserve campus, late for a 5 o'clock interview. Claiming to be working the lights, a man in the lobby offered to take her inside. Ignoring her internal alarm, Connors followed him, and there the man (who had been released on parole just a week earlier) raped her at knife point. Asked why she went with him, Connors privately, and with great shame, admits to herself, "I could not allow myself to be the white woman who fears black men." Despite being "the perfect victim" (white, educated, middle-class, married, with proof of a struggle and an immediate police report) and her perpetrator, David Francis, the perfect assailant (black, poor, with a criminal record), she is subjected to painful scrutiny and degradation before he is finally convicted. CONNORS'S FORTHRIGHT EXPLORATION of race and poverty enlarges her personal story, turning it into a richer, more complex and ultimately more harrowing account of interwoven traumas. David Francis, she discovers, was one of eight children born into a family that one surviving member describes as "cursed." That's as apt an explanation as any other: When Connors interviews some of Francis' siblings and family friends, she confronts a dizzying intersection of addiction, alcoholism, violence, racism, poverty and crime. (Even small children can't escape: In this extended family not one but two toddlers are killed, one by violence, the other through gross negligence.) What's miraculous about this memoir is Connors's ability to identify, in clean, lucid prose, evidence of hope - and even beauty - amid such an abundance of misery. In searching for the reasons the man who raped her became such a monster, Connors hoped to find freedom from the PTSD that haunted her for so long. She discovers instead a complicated web of tragedy connecting her family and his, a discovery that deepens her sense of compassion and allows her finally to heal. Winslow hasn't been granted the luxury of such closure. Her memoir illuminates the many ways in which legal and criminal institutions succeed in deepening the sense of violation, helplessness and anguish felt by the survivors of rape. Together both books serve as powerful evidence of our society's failure to address the causes and consequences of sexual violence. How tightly must the rape victim harness her emotions at trial? DOMENICA RUTA is the author of a memoir, "With or Without You."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [May 29, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Rape. It is a harsh reality for so many 1 in 5 women, 1 in 71 men. It is tough to write about it, and to read about it, and worse to experience. Far worse. Connors handles her rape story as only a survivor, and a crackerjack journalist, can. Two decades after being raped at knifepoint while on assignment for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Connors decided she had a need to know that outweighed her long-held need to forget. So she set out to locate her attacker, face him, and find out who he is, who he was, and, maybe, why their fates crossed on a hot July day in 1984. Her account of the event itself is raw and unnerving, even as it is filtered through words on a page. Even words, as much as they convey, can only go so far. But through her writing we do get a visceral glimpse of her pain, her fear, her wrongfully felt shame, and the anguish at loose in the world in which rape is a heinous everyday occurrence, one that wounds both victim and perpetrator. If a reader is looking for the most candid, most powerful true book about rape, let Connors' be the one.--Chavez, Donna Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this gripping memoir, Connors, a reporter for the Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio, reckons with trauma after rape. In 1984, while Connors was on a reporting assignment in Cleveland, she was raped by a stranger. After 30 years, she goes on a quest to uncover the personal story of David, the man who raped her, and in the process encounters the stories of brutality faced by David's family as they experience poverty and racism. Connors talks with David's siblings, who reveal their own trauma and exposure to violence at the hands of an abusive father and a broken legal system that over-incarcerates poor people of color. She examines the racial politics of Cleveland as she crosses geographic divisions between rich and poor neighborhoods, seeking out David's family. This book is a powerful story of exposing and confronting emotional scars in order to move forward. With emotional honesty and the precision of a seasoned journalist, Connors explores her own trials coping with the aftermath of rape, which leave the imprint of a constant fear and lead her to mistrust even close family members. Connors's astute reflections on race, gender, and the personal plight of victimhood make this book a must-read. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A journalist's harrowing account of how, over the course of more than three decades, she came to terms with an experience of rape. On a July day in 1984, Connors, then a theater critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, was on the Case Western Reserve University campus. While looking for a playwright she had to interview, Connors came across a young man who raped her at knife point. In this book, the author revisits that episode and tells the story of how the event permanently changed her. To survive the rape and, later, police questioning and the physical examination that followed, she temporarily dissociated, becoming like a spectator watching "a girl in a play." Even after police caught the rapist, David Williams, and sent him to prison, the ordeal continued. Her husbandwho considered hiring a hit man to kill Williamsbecame the object of the rage she had felt about her situation. Connors developed a severe case of PTSD, which made her pathologically fearful for her safety as well as that of her two children. Williams died in 2000, 16 years after the incident; yet his death did not alleviate Connors' suffering. Desperate to find the "narrative that would make sense of my rape and explainwhat forces led us to that spot where we collided," she began to investigate her rapist's life. Through interviews with his family members and crime victims, Connors learned that Williams and his siblings grew up in a brutally dysfunctional household. Rather than see Williams as a monster for what he did, the author developed compassion for him, for his "tragic" family, and, most of all, for herself. Powerful and compelling, the book is a highly personal examination of the volatile intersection of race, poverty, and violence. The author insightfully reflects on the idea that the greatest monster anyone, including victims of violent crime, must face is the monster within. A courageous and unsettlingly forthright memoir of overcoming trauma. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
