LITTLE GIRL LOST: One Woman's Journey Beyond Rape

by Leisha with Deborah Bruner Mendenhall Joseph ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 4, 1998

Despite its sheepish title, this is a commanding story not of a little girl lost, but of a woman-survivor who found herself and God in the painful aftermath of rape. Joseph enjoyed a storybook midwestern childhood until she was eight, when her loving father was killed in an engineering accident. His death threw the family in a quandary: Joseph's mother sank into a decade-long battle with manic-depression, and Joseph and her three older brothers were left to fend for themselves. But by age 18, the young woman and her family had turned their lives around. Joseph became a model student and committed evangelical Christian, and was elected homecoming queen. Yet her world was about to be tom asunder once again. Shortly after her high school graduation and before her marriage, Joseph was raped at gunpoint in a mall parking lot by a serial rapist who had disabled her car. Joseph again employed her faith to emerge triumphant from this dark, painful time, encouraging the rapist's other victims to file charges against him. After his conviction, she continued to struggle with trauma from the rape. Her memoir speaks honestly of her fears of sexual relations with her new husband and the deep anger she had welling inside her, ready to be unleashed on the people she loved the most. Joseph found healing by speaking out about her experience, first to local church groups and eventually to a national audience on the 700 Club. She also testified in another court case (her attacker attempted to rape another woman soon after his speedy parole), even finding the courage to present the rapist with a monogrammed, leather-bound Bible, which she prayed he would read. Moving and very frank, Joseph's story will offer courage to many women, Christian and otherwise, who have been victims of rape.

Pub Date: Aug. 4, 1998

ISBN: 0385492405

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1998

Categories: NONFICTION