I Will Find You: A Reporter Investigates the Life of the Man Who Raped Her: Unabridged edition
‘More chilling than a horror film and more thought provoking than an HBO doc …I Will Find You is at once hard to read and even harder to put down’ Cosmopolitan
A compelling and hard-hitting memoir which follows one woman’s search, 20 years after the attack, for answers about her rapist.
JJoanna Connors was thirty years old when she was raped at knifepoint by a stranger.
After this horrifying trauma, she became afraid of everything – flying, driving, travelling in a car while someone else drove. She had children, but hovered over them constantly, terrified about what might happen to them as well. Then, when her daughter was sixteen, Joanna began to confront the fear that had ruled her life ever since that day, and decided she needed, finally, to understand.
In an act of breathtaking humanity and pioneering journalistic courage, she went in search of the story of her own rapist, determined to find out who he was, where he came from, what his life was like – and what leads a person to do something as destructive as what he did to her.
The result of her investigation is I Will Find You, a shocking, moving memoir and a brave, timely consideration of poverty, race, class, education – and how life shapes who we become.
‘Brutally affecting. Connors’ story illustrates how inextricably our lives - and those of our children - are entwined with the lives of others’ Guardian -
”'(An) unflinching, riveting memoir…Spare, lucid and even funny at times, this account of learning to live with suffering is nothing short of haunting” - Mail on Sunday
”'Challenging, moving . . . Connors takes a hard look at assumptions we make about victims and perpetrators” - Sunday Times
”'Deeply humane and harrowing” - Boston Globe
”'Magnificent, necessary, unflinchingly honest” - Jon Krakauer
'Raw, compelling, deeply affecting' Polly Vernon -
”'Is it possible to call the story of a violent rape and its haunting aftermath a thing of beauty? This lucid, powerful memoir becomes its own form of redemption, as a seasoned reporter turns her gaze on her own life and that of her rapist's. A profoundly moving, important and, yes, beautiful book” - Dani Shapiro, author of STILL WRITING
”'The most important book on rape since Susan Brownmiller's AGAINST OUR WILL. Honest and strong, riveting and terrifying, heartbreaking and utterly unsentimental. This book will change lives and minds” - Mary Doria Russell, author of THE SPARROW
”'A hard-to-read book that is impossible to put down. I am in awe of Connors's courage and inspiring compassion. A testament to the power of forgiveness and a hard-earned grace” - Thrity Umrigar, author of THE SPACE BETWEEN US
”'A sobering, masterful, and meticulously researched exploration of the crime but with a twist: Connors plumbs the depths of her attacker and the culture of violence that made him a rapist. Understanding radiates from every page in prose that is crisp and full of unexpected notes of grace” - Beth Macy, New York Times bestselling author of FACTORY MAN