Get Free Ebook Strange Piece of Paradise, by Terri Jentz
Poses now this Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz as one of your book collection! Yet, it is not in your bookcase collections. Why? This is guide Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz that is given in soft data. You can download the soft data of this amazing book Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz currently and also in the link offered. Yeah, different with the other individuals which look for book Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz outside, you can get less complicated to present this book. When some people still walk right into the shop and also browse the book Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz, you are below just remain on your seat as well as obtain guide Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz.
Strange Piece of Paradise, by Terri Jentz
Get Free Ebook Strange Piece of Paradise, by Terri Jentz
When you are hurried of work due date and also have no concept to get inspiration, Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz book is one of your solutions to take. Book Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz will offer you the appropriate resource as well as point to obtain motivations. It is not only about the jobs for politic business, administration, economics, as well as various other. Some got works making some fiction works additionally require inspirations to get rid of the work. As what you require, this Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz will possibly be your choice.
As recognized, several people say that e-books are the custom windows for the globe. It does not mean that acquiring publication Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz will mean that you could buy this globe. Simply for joke! Reviewing an e-book Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz will certainly opened up an individual to think far better, to maintain smile, to entertain themselves, and also to urge the expertise. Every e-book likewise has their particular to influence the visitor. Have you known why you review this Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz for?
Well, still perplexed of the best ways to get this publication Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz here without going outside? Simply connect your computer system or gadget to the internet and also start downloading Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz Where? This page will certainly reveal you the link page to download Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz You never worry, your favourite publication will certainly be faster your own now. It will be a lot less complicated to delight in reading Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz by online or obtaining the soft documents on your gadget. It will despite which you are and what you are. This book Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz is composed for public as well as you are one of them which can appreciate reading of this book Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz
Spending the extra time by checking out Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz can offer such excellent experience also you are simply sitting on your chair in the office or in your bed. It will certainly not curse your time. This Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz will certainly guide you to have even more priceless time while taking rest. It is very delightful when at the midday, with a cup of coffee or tea and a publication Strange Piece Of Paradise, By Terri Jentz in your gizmo or computer display. By enjoying the sights around, here you could begin reviewing.
In the summer of 1977, Terri Jentz and her Yale roommate, Shayna Weiss, make a cross-country bike trip. They pitch a tent in the desert of central Oregon. As they are sleeping, a man in a pickup truck deliberately runs over the tent. He then attacks them with an ax. The horrific crime is reported in newspapers across the country. No one is ever arrested. Both women survive, but Shayna suffers from amnesia, while Terri is left alone with memories of the attack. Their friendship is shattered.
Fifteen years later, Terri returns to the small town where she was nearly murdered, on the first of many visits she will make “to solve the crime that would solve me.” And she makes an extraordinary discovery: the violence of that night is as present for the community as it is for her. Slowly, her extensive interviews with the townspeople yield a terrifying revelation: many say they know who did it, and he is living freely in their midst. Terri then sets out to discover the truth about the crime and its aftermath, and to come to terms with the wounds that broke her life into a before and an after. Ultimately she finds herself face-to-face with the alleged axman. Powerful, eloquent, and paced like the most riveting of thrillers, Strange Piece of Paradise is the electrifying account of Terri’s investigation into the mystery of her near murder. A startling profile of a psychopath, a sweeping reflection on violence and the myth of American individualism, and a moving record of a brave inner journey from violence to hope, this searing, unforgettable work is certain to be one of the most talked about books of the year.
- Sales Rank: #1299652 in Books
- Published on: 2006-05-02
- Released on: 2006-05-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .97" w x 6.00" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 560 pages
From Publishers Weekly
The author was a Yale student biking cross-country during the summer of 1977 when she and her roommate were attacked by an axe-wielding cowboy while camping in Oregon. Jentz escaped with a gashed arm, while her friend was nearly blinded from head injuries. Fifteen years later, in 1992, Jentz returns to the scene of the attack to repair the psychic wound and attempt to close the case. Dogged in her pursuit of the truth (though largely abandoning the subtitle's promise of introspection), Jentz interviews the witnesses who saw her stumble out of Cline Falls State Park that June night; she scrutinizes police files and discovers the halfhearted investigation of suspects, learning about several horrific killings that took place in Oregon then. Jentz even befriends the former girlfriends of one suspect who becomes frighteningly plausible as the culprit. She finally tracks down the local cowboy known for carving his initials into his axe handle; though he can no longer be prosecuted for the attack, the satisfaction of seeing him convicted for another offense is a bittersweet vindication. While a thorough, forthright detective, screenwriter Jentz tends to meander and includes unnecessary detail. Still, her story is chilling and will enthrall true crime readers. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Terri Jentz's harrowing story finds voice in Strange Piece of Paradise, her first book. Critics praise Jentz's courage for returning to the scene of such violence, though several comment that the difficulty of uncovering compelling evidence nearly 30 years later precludes a satisfying conclusion. The book's chronological organization also presents some minor problems, and the book can be plodding at times. Still, the shortcomings do little to mute Jentz's powerful and elegant style, her craft honed by a career as a screenwriter. Critics favorably compare the effort to Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, and they applaud the author's willingness to face her demons.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
Review
"In this memoir Terri Jentz grapples with the deep subconscious of America, as well as its flesh and blood. Her writing has the weirdness and gravitas and beauty of life." —Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir
"An extraordinary story about the scars of the spirit and how they heal, Jentz’s epic American journey is both heart-rending and heartening, devastating and redemptive." —Melanie Thernstrom, author of Halfway Heaven
"Strange Piece of Paradise is a haunting, lyrical journey through one woman's nightmare. Terri Jentz’s debut is harrowing, gripping and poignant. The impact lingers long after the final page is turned." —Harlan Coben, author of No Second Chance
"Strange Piece of Paradise is a haunting masterpiece. A journey into the heart of American violence, it is both a vividly brutal story and a redemptive tale of self reclamation and justice—asking why is America such a violent place, who are the perpetrators, and what is the nature of the suffering they inflict, not only on their victims but on whole communities. As the author describes her own emotional progression with dazzlingly discerning and subtle precision, the story holds us in its grip until we realize we have witnessed a stunning reversal: the victim hunts down the suspected perpetrator.
No one will be the same after reading this brilliant book. It is transformative in the best way, soul changing, with the promise of altering a culture that far too often aims toward and glorifies destruction." —Susan Griffin, author of A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War (Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist)
"Start this book, and you won’t stop. Memoir, detective story, travelogue, time capsule, horror movie come to life (and swinging a hatchet), obsessive manhunt, a tale of American innocence dashed and left for dead—Terri Jentz’s Strange Piece of Paradise has the narcotic force of a nightmare that won’t let go its grip until the truth is found and set free. In synopsis, Strange Piece of Paradise sounds like pulp fiction: 1977, two Yale students—hopeful and buoyant—embark upon a bike trip across the country’s "most scenic blue roads" only to be brutally attacked at a campsite by a psycho stranger in cowboy boots who drives off into the desert night. But the story is true, the locations real, the scars left on the author’s body bearing the track marks of her trauma. As if to perform reconstructive surgery on her psyche (to reconcile the adventurous young woman she was with the "scarecrow self" that has haunted her since), Jentz returns to the scene of the crime to conduct an epic investigation as shadowed in grief and as stricken by violence as Truman Capote’s Kansas in In Cold Blood." —James Wolcott, Vanity Fair columnist and author of The Catsitters
Most helpful customer reviews
104 of 110 people found the following review helpful.
An Honest Book That Is Felt As Much As It Is Read
By Amazon Customer
This is an incredible read!
Even if the story were lacking, which it certainly isn't, Terri Jentz skillfull and honest re-telling of the events that forever altered and in many ways shaped the rest of her life could make up for it. But instead this book, 542 pages of very closely typed small print, is worth a thousand pages of raw emotion that left me feeling that it had been under, rather than overstated.
Page by page, the author takes you on a tour of her life from age 19, when as a college student at Yale, she and her roommate Shayna undertake a cross-country bicycle ride. Beginning and ending in Oregon, the summer-long excursion ends in a mere 7 days when an axe-wielding maniac first drives over the tent as the girls lie at camp sleeping, and then hacks and carves into them before returning to his truck and driving away.
The girls live, but Terri tells the story, detail by detail, and as a reader, I sensed that I too was on that bike ride, in the tent, and almost twenty years later, re-tracing both the steps leading up to the attack and the attack itself. But even more compelling is that the way Terri tells her story, all emotion is felt, including not only the fear and terror, but the emotionally blank periods in Terri's life in which, to cope with the horror, she had shut out her ability to sense the reality of what had happened to her as she related her experience to friends and acquaintences as if it were a piece of amusing fiction.
Finally, coming to grips with the knowledge that she had "disassociated with the self in the sleeping bag that night" in order to survive it emotionally, Terri sets out not only to retrace her steps in hope of regaining her lost emotions, but also, to discover the identity of her would-be murderer and the incredulity of a small town that knew so much more about what happened to her than she did herself.
This is a book that you wont want to put down until it is finished. It is not light reading, but told with such skill and honesty, it goes much more quickly than expected. Don't read it caffienated!
69 of 76 people found the following review helpful.
"Strange things happen to people in America. Some bitterly cruel. And some so beautiful that faith is retired forever."
By Jessica Lux
To Terri Jentz, Oregon is a dark and strange piece of paradise. After her freshman year at Yale, Jentz and her roommate Shayna set off on a summer 1977 Great American Journey--crossing the country from Oregon to Virginia on a BikeCentennial route. On Day 22 of the journey, Jentz and Shayna separated from a couple they had met on the road and then decided to stop for the night in an unapproved campground. They awoke that night to the unimaginable horror of a pickup truck driving through their tent, and then a handsome phantom of a cowboy striking them repeatedly with an axe.
Jentz was physically damaged by the event, but she moved on with her life as a woman unafraid of telling her story, unafraid of the dark, and still willing to tent-camp. Her companion Shayna had amnesia about the night and barely survived with limited vision. She distanced herself from Jentz and the memories of that night as much as possible.
Fifteen years later, Jentz returned to Cline Falls, Oregon to investigate her past. "Could I ever apply meaning to what had long seemed a senseless act, one that happened without pattern or reason?" "Who was the man who emerged that night in a desert park, bent on destruction?" The statute of limitations on attempted murder in Oregon was a mere three years, so Jentz's adult odyssey was truly a personal exploration, not a formal legal investigation. In Orgeon, Jentz teamed up with victim's rights advocate Dee Dee, who puts it best: "We kind of reward you because you're not very good at what you do. The only difference between attempted murder and murder is that somebody was inadequate in what they tried to do. Their intent was the same. That person is as great a danger to society as the person who completed the murder. Maybe they're a bad shot. Why would you reward them?"
It was the lack of formal legal recourse that allowed Jentz access to the close-knit community of Cline Falls. Over the course of a decade, she traveled to Oregon repeatedly to chase down leads, interview police, talk to witnesses, and re-unite with her rescuers and with the hospital staff who cared for her. The girls "who got chopped up at Cline Falls" were ingrained in the collective memory of Oregonians and the nation, and everyone had a flicker of recognition when Jentz identified herself. She quickly discovered that the town had long suspected one of their own, an alcoholic, abusive sadist with a long history of domestic violence, as the perpetrator. He even had a nickname--Dick Duran the Hatchet Man. In candid prose, Jentz describes the bureaucratic mistakes made in the investigation of her case (it became a turf war between three local agencies), as well as the 1977 public relations nightmare of talking about two girls who "asked for it" by camping alone in an unapproved area, and the face of crime in the 1970's (the term serial killer hadn't even been invented yet, and there were no crime tabloids and TV shows).
Despite the inconsistencies and missteps Jentz discovered in the official investigation, nothing about the case is open and shut. Jentz finds witnesses who contradict one another, who contradict previous statements, and people who made claims but have been influenced by the gossip around town in the two decades since the crime. Her research is exhaustive, and she accepts nothing at face value. The author should be commended for her dedication to factual accuracy (she refused to accept hearsay); however, the extreme detail does weigh the action down partway through the book. As an armchair detective, I would have gladly accepted a more condensed version of interviews. This is still, without question, a 5-star narrative that succeeds both as a personal memoir and as a criminal case study.
35 of 41 people found the following review helpful.
Gripping, powerful, important
By Kevin Kouns
I am not normally a "true crime" or even a "memoir" lover, but this is a remarkable book. In my opinion, the book works well on three different levels:
First, it is a gripping, page-turning, dectective story with the twist that the investigation is taking place fifteen years after the crime and the victim is pursuing the criminal. Second, it is an important exaimination of the effects of voilence on our communities and an expose of our ineffective criminal justice system. Finally, the book is a powerful study of identity, an unusual "coming of age" story that takes place over thirty years. The author was deeply traumatized by her random brush with death. I found her struggle to integrate and make sense of this senseless act very moving.
This is a complex book and undoubtedly it will provoke comdemnation from some who disagree with its premisees or who do not "get" its introspective components. The author challenges conservative notions by powerfully revealing the pervasiveness of violence against women in our culture, and challenges liberal naivete about forgiveness and reformation of criminal minds. This book grapples with important issues and I hope it provokes some much needed national discussion.
This review is not particularly objective; Terri is a friend, and my parents play a supporting role in her tale. However, rather than coloring my judgement, I believe my familiarity with Terri and my family's experience as victims of crime gives me a unique vantage point for reviewing the book. Terri captures the complexity and nuances of the effects of trauma. Most importantly, her work is profoundly honest and genuine. I watched her go through this process for over a decade. Her book is the real deal.
Strange Piece of Paradise, by Terri Jentz PDF
Strange Piece of Paradise, by Terri Jentz EPub
Strange Piece of Paradise, by Terri Jentz Doc
Strange Piece of Paradise, by Terri Jentz iBooks
Strange Piece of Paradise, by Terri Jentz rtf
Strange Piece of Paradise, by Terri Jentz Mobipocket
Strange Piece of Paradise, by Terri Jentz Kindle
No comments:
Post a Comment