by Eileen Ross ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 10, 1992
Part true-life drama, part police procedural, this memoir of a blind woman fighting to bring her rapist to justice succeeds as neither one nor the other. Ross, a legally blind (but partially sighted) young woman who worked as a medical transcriber and lived on Manhattan's Upper East Side, was assaulted one hot summer night by a man who broke into her first-floor apartment, bludgeoned her two dogs, struck her on the head, ordered her to cook breakfast for him, and finally raped her twice. Coolheaded and enraged even in the midst of her terror, Ross was determined to trap the man and managed to get his fingerprints on a glass. After his departure, her ordeal was compounded, she says, by the inept and callous treatment of the NYPD Sex Crimes Squad and the coldness of the hospital personnel who collected evidence of the rape. Outraged and determined not to act like a victim, Ross had a friend call the news media. She then gave an interview to New York's ABC local-news affiliate on the sidewalk outside the hospital: wrapped in a sheet from the examining table, she told of the brutal rape and urged that the criminal be brought to justice. The Brooklyn Sex Crimes Squad saw the telecast, recognized the M.O. of a suspect they'd been tracking in their borough, and contacted Ross. With the help of the fingerprints she had secured, they were able to identify the man as a repeat offender and to arrest him. Ross comes across as a brave woman, but her characterizations have little depth or complexity, and the pursuit, arrest, trial, and conviction of the rapist proceed with so few hitches that there's little suspense. Still, victims of sexual assault may find inspiration in Ross's example.
Pub Date: Jan. 10, 1992
ISBN: 0-88282-105-9
Page Count: 300
Publisher: New Horizon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1991
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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