
The Fact of a Body
A Murder and a Memoir
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Narrated by:
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Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
About this listen
"This book is a marvel. The Fact of a Body is equal parts gripping and haunting and will leave you questioning whether any one story can hold the full truth." -- Celeste Ng, author of the New York Times bestselling Everything I Never Told You
Before Alex Marzano-Lesnevich begins a summer job at a law firm in Louisiana, working to help defend men accused of murder, they think their position is clear. The child of two lawyers, Alex is staunchly anti-death penalty. But the moment convicted murderer Ricky Langley’s face flashes on the screen as Alex reviews old tapes—the moment they hear him speak of his crimes—they are overcome with the feeling of wanting him to die. Shocked by their reaction, Alex digs deeper and deeper into the case. Despite their vastly different circumstances, something in Langley's story is unsettlingly, uncannily familiar.
Crime, even the darkest and most unsayable acts, can happen to any one of us. As Alex pores over the facts of the murder, they find themself thrust into the complicated narrative of Ricky’s childhood. And by examining the details of Ricky’s case, Alex is forced to face their own story, to unearth long-buried family secrets, and reckon with a past that colors their view of Ricky's crime.
But another surprise awaits: Alex wasn’t the only one who saw their life in Ricky’s.
An intellectual and emotional thriller that is also a different kind of murder mystery, THE FACT OF A BODY is an audiobook not only about how the story of one crime was constructed—but about how we grapple with our own personal histories. Along the way it tackles questions about the nature of forgiveness, and if a single narrative can ever really contain something as definitive as the truth. This groundbreaking, heart-stopping work, ten years in the making, shows how the law is more personal than we would like to believe—and the truth more complicated, and powerful, than we could ever imagine.
This program is read by the author.
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Editorial reviews
Editors Select, May 2017
I won’t bury the lede: If Marzano-Lesnevich doesn’t get shortlisted for a Pulitzer for this incredible work, I’ll eat my hat. This book was so much more than I expected - on one side, a riveting true crime that follows the horrific murder of a six-year-old boy back through the tragic life story of his killer, convicted child molester Ricky Langley; on the other side, the masterful and emotionally intelligent story of the author’s own childhood abuse. But the truly outstanding achievement is how she folds together those sides to demonstrate that there is no absolute truth or justice, only conclusions that are as variable and complex as the concluder. Like Joan Didion or Truman Capote, Marzano-Lesnevich makes otherwise austere reporting cinematic and moving by filling in sensory details with her own imagination, and by narrating in her own kind, empathic voice, she draws you that much closer. —Erin, Audible Editor
Critic reviews
"This book is a marvel. With unflinching precision and immense compassion, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich peels apart both a murder case and her own experience to reveal how we try to make sense of the past. The Fact of a Body is equal parts gripping and haunting and will leave you questioning whether any one story can hold the full truth." --Celeste Ng, author of the New York Times bestselling Everything I Never Told You
"The Fact of a Body is unlike any murder story I've ever read, a masterpiece of both reportage and memoir, a book that could only be written by an author with Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich's staggering gifts: a relentless reporter with a law degree from Harvard, a poet's understanding of the cadence of a line, and a novelist's gift for empathy. Walter Benjamin famously said that all great works of art either dissolve a genre or invent one. This book does both, and its greatness is undeniable." --Justin St. Germain, author of Son of a Gun
"The Fact of a Body is a remarkable act of witness, an anatomy of silence and the violence it abets, a book of both public and private accountings. Rejecting the false comfort of certainty, it confronts the inadequacy of all our tools for fathoming not just unforgivable crimes, but the baffling, human grace that can forgive them. This is a profound and riveting book." -- Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You
Featured Article: The top 100 memoirs of all time
All genres considered, the memoir is among the most difficult and complex for a writer to pull off. After all, giving voice to your own lived experience and recounting deeply painful or uncomfortable memories in a way that still engages and entertains is a remarkable feat. These autobiographies, often narrated by the authors themselves, shine with raw, unfiltered emotion sure to resonate with any listener. But don't just take our word for it—queue up any one of these listens, and you'll hear exactly what we mean.
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Black Klansman
- Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigations of a Lifetime
- By: Ron Stallworth
- Narrated by: Ron Stallworth
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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This program is read by the author. When detective Ron Stallworth, the first Black detective in the history of the Colorado Springs Police Department, comes across a classified ad in the local paper asking for all those interested in joining the Ku Klux Klan to contact a PO box, Detective Stallworth does his job and responds with interest, using his real name while posing as a White man.
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Riveting and interesting, I enjoyed hearing historic details throughout the story.
- By Amazon Customer on 07-18-18
By: Ron Stallworth
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Unmasked
- My Life Solving America's Cold Cases
- By: Paul Holes, Robin Gaby Fisher
- Narrated by: Paul Holes
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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I order another bourbon, neat. This is the drink that will flip the switch. I don’t even know how I got here, to this place, to this point. Something is happening to me lately. I’m drinking too much. My sheets are soaking wet when I wake up from nightmares of decaying corpses. I order another drink and swig it, trying to forget about the latest case I can’t shake. Crime solving for me is more complex than the challenge of the hunt, or the process of piecing together a scientific puzzle. The thought of good people suffering drives me to the point of obsession.
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I gave it the old college try
- By Hobbes on 05-06-22
By: Paul Holes, and others
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Liliana's Invincible Summer
- A Sister's Search for Justice
- By: Cristina Rivera Garza
- Narrated by: Victoria Villarreal
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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October 18, 2019. Cristina Rivera Garza travels from her home in Texas to Mexico City, in search of an old, unresolved criminal file. “My name is Cristina Rivera Garza,” she writes in her request to the attorney general, “and I am writing to you as a relative of Liliana Rivera Garza, who was murdered on July 16, 1990.” It’s been twenty-nine years. Twenty-nine years, three months, and two days since Liliana was murdered by an abusive ex-boyfriend.
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liliannas love, and the injustice/mysogeny in the Mexican culture
- By sldpac on 04-18-25
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Memorial Drive
- A Daughter's Memoir
- By: Natasha Trethewey
- Narrated by: Natasha Trethewey
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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At age 19, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Grieving and still new to adulthood, she confronted the twin pulls of life and death in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma and now explores the way this experience lastingly shaped the artist she became. With penetrating insight and a searing voice that moves from the wrenching to the elegiac, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey explores this profound experience of pain, loss, and grief.
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poetic
- By Amazon Customer on 08-03-20
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My Story
- By: Elizabeth Smart, Chris Stewart
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Smart
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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On June 5, 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart, the daughter of a close-knit Mormon family, was taken from her home in the middle of the night by religious fanatic, Brian David Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee. She was kept chained, dressed in disguise, repeatedly raped, and told she and her family would be killed if she tried to escape. After her rescue on March 12, 2003, she rejoined her family and worked to pick up the pieces of her life.
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Defining Strength, Faith, and Inspiration
- By Mel on 10-08-13
By: Elizabeth Smart, and others
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The 57 Bus
- A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives
- By: Dashka Slater
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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If it weren't for the 57 bus, Sasha and Richard never would have met. Both were high school students from Oakland, California, one of the most diverse cities in the country, but they inhabited different worlds. Sasha, a white teen, lived in the middle-class foothills and attended a small private school. Richard, a black teen, lived in the crime-plagued flatlands and attended a large public one. Each day, their paths overlapped for a mere eight minutes. But, one afternoon, on the bus ride home from school, a single reckless act left Sasha severely burned.
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An Unusual True-Crime Event...Beautifully Written.
- By Mary Burnight on 02-21-18
By: Dashka Slater
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Adnan's Story
- The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial
- By: Rabia Chaudry
- Narrated by: Rabia Chaudry
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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In early 2000, Adnan Syed was convicted and sentenced to life plus thirty years for the murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, a high school senior in Baltimore, Maryland. Syed has maintained his innocence, and Rabia Chaudry, a family friend, has always believed him. By 2013, after almost all appeals had been exhausted, Rabia contacted Sarah Koenig, a producer at This American Life, in hopes of finding a journalist who could shed light on Adnan’s story. In 2014, Koenig's investigation turned into Serial, a Peabody Award-winning podcast with more than 500 million international listeners.
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Fascinating. Heartbreaking. Informative.
- By Angela on 08-11-16
By: Rabia Chaudry
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The Babysitter
- My Summers with a Serial Killer
- By: Liza Rodman, Jennifer Jordan
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt, Aida Reluzco
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Growing up on Cape Cod in the 1960s, Liza Rodman was a lonely little girl. During the summers, while her mother worked days in a local motel and danced most nights in the Provincetown bars, her babysitter - the kind, handsome handyman at the motel where her mother worked - took her and her sister on adventures in his truck. He bought them popsicles and together, they visited his “secret garden” in the Truro woods. To Liza, he was one of the few kind, understanding, and safe adults in her life.
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Very little Serial Killer; Child Sexual Situations
- By Hollee Olson on 05-13-21
By: Liza Rodman, and others
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The Phantom Prince
- My Life with Ted Bundy
- By: Elizabeth Kendall, Molly Kendall - contributor
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Kendall, Barrie Kreinik, Molly Kendall
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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The Phantom Prince chronicles Elizabeth Kendall’s intimate relationship with Ted Bundy and its eventual unraveling. As much as has been written about Bundy, it’s remarkable to hear the perspective of people who shared their daily lives with him for years. This gripping account presents a remarkable examination of a charismatic personality that masked unimaginable darkness.
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Same Planet, Different Worlds
- By Christine E. Lee on 01-29-20
By: Elizabeth Kendall, and others
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The Innocent Man
- Murder and Injustice in a Small Town
- By: John Grisham
- Narrated by: Craig Wasson
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In the town of Ada, Oklahoma, Ron Williamson was going to be the next Mickey Mantle. But on his way to the Big Leagues, Ron stumbled, his dreams broken by drinking, drugs, and women. Then, on a winter night in 1982, not far from Ron’s home, a young cocktail waitress named Debra Sue Carter was savagely murdered. The investigation led nowhere. Until, on the flimsiest evidence, it led to Ron Williamson. The washed-up small-town hero was charged, tried, and sentenced to death - in a trial littered with lying witnesses and tainted evidence....
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Wake up people...
- By Michael H. Wagner on 10-14-09
By: John Grisham
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I'll Be Gone in the Dark
- One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
- By: Michelle McNamara
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman, Gillian Flynn - introduction, Patton Oswalt - afterword
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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A masterful true crime account of the Golden State Killer - the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California for over a decade - from Michelle McNamara, the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case.
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A haunting masterpiece
- By Kat - Audible on 03-02-18
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Say Nothing
- A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
- By: Patrick Radden Keefe
- Narrated by: Matthew Blaney
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Jean McConville's abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.
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On a par with I'll Be Gone in the Dark, plus...
- By Grace O'Malley on 03-01-19
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Know My Name
- A Memoir
- By: Chanel Miller
- Narrated by: Chanel Miller
- Length: 15 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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She was known to the world as Emily Doe when she stunned millions with a letter. Brock Turner had been sentenced to just six months in county jail after he was found sexually assaulting her on Stanford's campus. Her victim impact statement was posted on BuzzFeed, where it instantly went viral. Now, she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words.
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Just, thank you.
- By Alysha DeShaé on 09-25-19
By: Chanel Miller
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In Cold Blood
- By: Truman Capote
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 14 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.
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Still the Best
- By Lisa on 01-10-06
By: Truman Capote
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What the Dead Know
- Learning About Life as a New York City Death Investigator
- By: Barbara Butcher
- Narrated by: Barbara Butcher
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Barbara Butcher was early in her recovery from alcoholism when she found an unexpected lifeline: a job at the Medical Examiner’s Office in New York City. The second woman ever hired for the role of Death Investigator in Manhattan, she was the first to last more than three months. The work was gritty, demanding, morbid, and sometimes dangerous—and she loved it. In What the Dead Know, she writes with the kind of New York attitude and bravado you might expect from decades in the field, investigating more than 5,500 death scenes, 680 of which were homicides.
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Didn’t Want The Book To End
- By Becky Sullivan on 06-29-23
By: Barbara Butcher
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The Barn
- The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi
- By: Wright Thompson
- Narrated by: Wright Thompson
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Wright Thompson’s family farm in Mississippi is 23 miles from the site of one of the most notorious and consequential killings in American history, yet he had to leave the state for college before he learned the first thing about it. To this day, fundamental truths about the crime are widely unknown, including where it took place and how many people were involved. This is no accident: the cover-up began at once, and it is ongoing.
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Evocative
- By Mentally in Paris on 09-25-24
By: Wright Thompson
What listeners say about The Fact of a Body
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- DrJane
- 05-20-17
Ambitious, Moving
Not a happy story, but exceptionally executed. Much to ponder during and after listening to this book. The author's narrative is of the highest quality, too.
The juxtaposition of true crime and personal history genres is brilliant. I mirror the author's hunger to examine facts and the value of ethics. She is a very talented storyteller, but if you like action /intrigue without so much dogged pursduit of truth, skip this one. My take home from this book is that "truth" is often unattainable. and least likely to be neatly packaged in court.
I deeply enjoyed the intellectual ride and the engrossing story full of nuance, beauty, and sensory input. I am changed by it.
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5 people found this helpful
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- TLMc
- 05-31-17
Gripping
Couldn't sleep after finishing this book. Not because it was dark or scary, but because I couldn't stop processing its message.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Marsha Gershon
- 05-25-17
A mesmerizing masterpiece!
I just finished this 10.5 hr audiobook in under 4 days -- definitely a new record I didn't know I was capable of! Listening while driving, cooking, cleaning, sitting in the bathroom, gardening with earbuds in, and sometimes in small bits whenever I could squeeze them in like the minutes in-between getting up from my yoga mat to sitting down at my work laptop lamenting that I didn't have more time to keep listening. It's not a short book, but I almost wish it was longer because I wanted to keep listening and keep being mesmerized by this masterpiece. Bravo and congratulations to the author for this achievement!
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3 people found this helpful
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- Christina
- 06-15-17
Best listened to at .75 speed
Great book. Best listened to at .75 speed. The writing deserves the slower pace. The topic needs the slower pace for the listener to absorb. Five starts is not enough.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Rachel
- 10-17-17
True Crime Meets Heartbreaking Memoir
Once I started listening to The Fact of a Body on audio, I couldn’t stop. I knew it was a true story about a murder, but I didn’t know how much more it was going to be or how much I’ve always been looking for this story. In 1992, a 6-year-old boy was murdered in Louisiana. Years later, law student Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich went on a quest to understand the convicted murderer’s mind in order to answer questions from her own past. If you’ve ever had the experience of learning that someone close to you has done something unthinkable, this is a fascinating, difficult, and special story. The author does her own narration, and she treats the story so delicately that I was able to handle it on audio.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Sulley
- 11-29-21
Story that Needed to Told on Both Fronts
I had a very difficult time with this story for personal reasons, but I am glad that I listened for it is one that I know is important for women who have been abused and told to ignore what happened to them and just go on living. This story had many different layers and I felt that if you can listen you can hear the author and how she also conveys how she continues to live and thrive even throughout darkness that surrounds us in the world and how we continue to move forward. even when those that we care about ignore the facts that they helped with contributing to our abuse by turning a blind eye and we cannot explain why we still love them something I ask myself regularly as I forgive those that caused the pain, but how do we actually forget when it stays with you forever and shapes the person you have become.
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- K. McKenzie
- 11-16-23
Very Gripping
The author and narrator makes you want to listen more going through the history of a two families that surround the murder of a six-year-old while also learning about the author’s life as well and how they have a common cord. So much information as well that a second read is needed.
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- K. S. Grice
- 10-21-21
Disappointed
After reading some of the other reviews before listening, I had high hopes this would be a hard one to “put down” … however , it’s two weeks later and I’m not invested at all; the contradiction of the two stories does not align and there is no travesty and nothing unique in how the author presents her story. Not sure why we would feel sympathy for an overprivileged life of a young girl who that privilege not withheld had to deal with normal challenges countless others have faced and experienced. Even the attempt to align her story with that of a serial pedophile and child killer is a nonstarter. Thumbs down on this one …
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- ChattieCathy
- 08-10-22
I loved this story!!!
I loved the way she made connections between the victim, criminal and herself. Her raw telling of the truth of her own youth and her relationship with her parents kept me glued. The narration was good, the cadence is smooth and her voice, soothing. It went straight to my favorite list
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- Rebecca
- 05-29-17
Brilliant and fascinating.
I listened to this book from start to finish without a break, I was so engaged and as it ended I felt as if I had just stepped off a roller coaster.
This is not easy stuff to think about. Its not a feel-good story. Its true crime on one side of the coin, and then the other side is a remarkable exploration of the parallels drawn by a brilliant mind between the life of an admitted pedophile, a convicted child killer, and her own childhood sexual trauma and the two families, her own and the killer's, and how each family created, and later how they dealt with, pedophiles and child sexual trauma in their families.
I was blown away by the way Ms. Marzano-Lesnevich bravely examines the facts of her own childhood trauma and the ways in which it continued to affect both her mind and her body for all the years that followed, and then how she is able to see connections and patterns in the details of the past, both that of the killer, and her own.
Absolutely worth the credit!!!
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4 people found this helpful