Moroney's compassion and courage are remarkable, but her story is disturbing because of the questions it raises about the...
A young woman's page-turning account of how she faced the trauma that came in the aftermath of sadistic sex crimes perpetrated by her husband.
When Canadian restorative-justice advocate Moroney met Jason Staples, she thought she'd found the perfect man. Not long after their first encounter, however, Staples revealed his troubled past, which included his incarceration for a murder he committed at 18. Troubled as she was by his confession, Moroney eventually decided to begin a relationship with him—"[e]verything in my heart, mind, and body told me it was the right choice.” The couple married after a happy three-year courtship that included more than two years of cohabitation. But just one month after their union, their picture-perfect world collapsed when police confronted Moroney with the news that Staples had kidnapped and raped two women. Neither she nor anyone else (including his parole officer and psychologist) could believe what had happened, and public outrage began to swirl around the case. Soon, the young newlywed found herself jobless, abandoned by friends and victimized by the justice system. Yet for all the hardships she endured, Moroney refused to sever ties with Staples. Instead, she chose to work through her grief and anger by trying to understand what had driven her husband to commit such heinous crimes. It was only by forgiving the man she had once loved that she believed she could learn to love and trust again.
Moroney's compassion and courage are remarkable, but her story is disturbing because of the questions it raises about the effectiveness of criminal rehabilitation, particularly where violent felons are concerned.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-7820-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
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
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
