Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Categories
Fiction: narrative themes

I WILL FIND YOU

Joanna Connors

A Reporter Investigates the Life of the Man Who Raped Her

A compelling and hard-hitting memoir which follows one woman’s search, 20 years after the attack, for answers about her rapist.

When Joanna Connors was thirty years old on assignment for the Cleveland Plain Dealer to review a play at a college theater, she was held at knife point and raped by a stranger who had grown up five miles away from her. Once her assailant was caught and sentenced, Joanna never spoke of the trauma again, until 21 years later when her daughter was about to go to college. She resolved then to tell her children about her own rape so they could learn and protect themselves, and she began to realize that the man who assaulted her was one of the formative people in her life. Setting out to uncover the story of her attacker, Connors embarked on a journey to find out who he was, where he came from, who his friends were and what his life was like. What she discovers stretches beyond one violent man’s story and back into her own, interweaving a narrative about strength and survival with one about rape culture and violence in America. I Will Find You is a brave, timely consideration of race, class, education and the families that shape who we become, by a reporter and a survivor. When Joanna Connors was thirty years old on assignment for the Cleveland Plain Dealer to review a play at a college theater, she was held at knife point and raped by a stranger who had grown up five miles away from her. Once her assailant was caught and sentenced, Joanna never spoke of the trauma again, until 21 years later when her daughter was about to go to college. She resolved then to tell her children about her own rape so they could learn and protect themselves, and she began to realize that the man who assaulted her was one of the formative people in her life. Setting out to uncover the story of her attacker, Connors embarked on a journey to find out who he was, where he came from, who his friends were and what his life was like. What she discovers stretches beyond one violent man’s story and back into her own, interweaving a narrative about strength and survival with one about rape culture and violence in America. I Will Find You is a brave, timely consideration of race, class, education and the families that shape who we become, by a reporter and a survivor.

Available products
Book Published 2016-04-05 by Grove/ Atlantic Monthly Press

Comments

UK: Fourth Estate

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. With emotional honesty and profound questioning, Connors deftly turns her victimization into a considered meditation on how we treat others. Must read.

’I will find you’ vowed the man who rapes Joanna Connors should she tell anyone. In this perturbing, irresistible memoir, Connors writes that her attacker’s threat haunted her for the next two decades– a diabolical punishment, she learned, inflicted on most rape victims. ‘Why do we feel shame?’ She wondered. ‘What do we do with it? Connors answers these questions with wry eloquence and surprising compassion in this magnificent, necessary, unflinchingly honest book.

Impossible to put down. I am in awe of Connors’ courage and inspiring compassion.

If a reader is looking for the most candid, most powerful true book about rape, let Connors’ be the one.

Powerful and compelling, the book is a highly personal examination of the volatile intersection of race, poverty, and violence. The author insightfully reflects on the idea that the greatest monster anyone, including victims of violent crime, must face is the monster within. A courageous and unsettlingly forthright memoir of overcoming trauma.

Masterful. Understanding radiates from every page in prose that is crisp and full of unexpected notes of grace.

Raw, compelling, deeply affecting...

The most important book on rape since Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will. This book will change lives and minds

Is it possible to call the story of violent rape and its haunting aftermath a thing of beauty? In the hands of Joanna Connors, this lucid, powerful memoir becomes its own form of redemption.

Gripping. This book is a powerful story of exposing and confronting emotional scars in order to move forward. A must-read.