Still Loved by the Sun: A Rape Survivor's Journal - Softcover

Scherer, Migael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452270650 ISBN 13: 9780452270657

Publisher: Plume, 1993

Synopsis

This illuminating account is a personal story, yet it reveals the universality of Scherer's reaction to her trauma--the flashbacks, nightmares, feelings of anguish, despair, and vulnerability, inexplicably and maddeningly interspersed among hours and even days of progress.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

A writer and former high-school teacher shares her journal descriptions of her own rape and near-murder in a Seattle laundromat, and of the year of emotional chaos and the grueling courtroom trial that followed. A gripping and deeply moving account that should erase any lingering doubts about rape's damaging effects on the psyche. In her early 40s, Scherer lived contentedly on a boat in a Seattle marina, productively occupied with her architect husband, a circle of close friends, and a technical-writing career--until the morning of February 9, 1988, when she dropped by a local laundromat to wash some clothes, was accosted by a white man near her own age, and was raped at knife-point on the laundromat floor. In the process of trying to strangle Scherer, the assailant became frightened and ran away. Scherer was left nearly unconscious with sliced-up hands and a heart shape carved into her neck. Severely traumatized, she nevertheless struggled through the first steps in what would become an agonizing two-year journey back to ``normality''--calling her husband and the police, undergoing a postrape medical exam, submitting to interviews with detectives, and, nearly a year later, participating in the trial of her rapist, Seattle native Steven Slater--who was sentenced to 14 years in prison. While Scherer suffered severe anxiety during the months between her rape and the trial's end--unable, at first, to be alone for more than a few hours, tortured by nightmares and the fear that her rapist would return to kill her--she emphasizes her good fortune in encountering empathetic friends, caring professionals, and a legal system that worked. The intense pain Scherer evokes even in this supportive situation conveys much about the rape experience. A valuable contribution. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

In twenty minutes Migael Scherer's life changes forever. On a Tuesday morning at a local laundromat, a man stabs her, rapes her, and says, when he unclenches his hands from her throat, "You're a very lucky woman." Still Loved by the Sun is Migael Scherer's journey down a road traveled by an estimated one in three women in the United States. With honesty and exacting details of the rape's aftermath, she captures the emotional hell and lasting repercussions of her assault, the importance of the support of her husband and close friends, and the trial of her rapist. We feel her inability to concentrate, to be alone, to keep from crying. One month after the rape, when asked if she feels connected with her body she realizes "Of course! The sense of my body as separate, almost dangerous, accounts for so much: my feeling translucent, my intense need for physical intimacy, my skewed time sense." When she feels strong enough, she attends group sessions with other rape survivors and through their stories, Migael Scherer sees her experience in a larger context, as part of rape's effects on society. Still Loved By the Sun makes real rape's full impact - the fear, lack of control, the deep invasive sadness, and the daily struggles to keep emotionally afloat. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Holly Smith

Edition details

• Publisher: Plume
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0452270650
• ISBN 13: 9780452270657
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224