In a memoir hailed for its searing candor and wit, Alice Sebold reveals how her life was utterly transformed when, as an eighteen-year-old college freshman, she was brutally raped and beaten in a park near campus. What propels this chronicle of her recovery is Sebold's indomitable spirit - as she struggles for understanding; as her dazed family and friends sometimes bungle their efforts to provide comfort and support; and as, ultimately, she triumphs, managing through grit and coincidence to help secure her attacker's arrest and conviction. In a narrative by turns disturbing, thrilling, and inspiring, Alice Sebold illuminates the experience of a trauma victim even as she imparts wisdom profoundly hard-won: "You save yourself or you remain unsaved."

"A rueful, razor-sharp memoir... funnier than you 'd think was possible.... Sebold tells what it's like to go through a particular kind of nightmare in order to tell what it's like - slowly, bumpily, triumphantly—to heal. " --- Sarah Kerr, Vogue