Terri Jentz, the author, was on a cross-country bike trip, with her Yale roommate, in 1977, when the unspeakable happened: while camping in a tent, in the Oregon desert, a man drove a pick up over their tent and attacked them with an ax. No one was ever charged with this horrific crime. Fifteen years later, Jentz returns to the small town where the event happened and starts doing some sleuthing herself. She makes some incredible discoveries. This is a solid true-crime tale. It could have used a little more editing but that is a minor quibble. Worked well on audio too. ( )

I thought it could have been about 200 pages less. It was very interesting but kept repeating various information that was kind of run into the ground. ( )

Had this not been selected by my book group, I probly would have bypassed it altogether, and missed out on an extraordinary story of senseless devastation and redemption. A bit long in parts, but once I started, I couldn't put it down. ( )

In 1977 trekt Terri Jentz samen met een studievriendin per fiets dwars door de Verenigde Staten. Op een kampeerplek in Oregon slaat het noodlot toe: een psychopaat rijdt met zijn auto over hun tent heen en valt de vrouwen vervolgens met een bijl aan. Ze overleven de aanslag ternauwernood. De dader wordt nooit gepakt.

Vijftien jaar later bezoekt Terri opnieuw de bewuste plek. Met hulp van de plaatselijke bevolking probeert ze te achterhalen wie de gestoorde man was. De antwoorden die ze in Oregon vindt helpen haar af te rekenen met het trauma dat haar leven al vijftien jaar lang beheerst.

Terri Jentz is pretty impressive. Not only does she survive a horrific attack and then rescue both her friend and herself, but she also returns to the scene of the crime years later to conduct her own investigation, since the statute of limitations has expired and the police never figured out whodunnit. I found the book to be difficult to read, unfortunately. One reason is the writing style. Jentz tends to repeat herself, and while as a human being I understand (if I were attacked with an axe, I'm sure I'd talk a lot about my scars also), as a reader, I found myself skimming. I think the prose could have been tightened considerably (no need to harp on the phrase 'strange piece of paradise' . . . or to describe every single return visit to the scene of the crime . . . or to describe multiple times what happened to her sleeping bag.) Another reason is that Jentz' investigation brought out stories of other awful crimes, including crimes against children, that I don't tolerate well. I like reading the "how we caught the evildoer" true crime investigations, but I don't like reading "here's the evil event told in tortuous detail" stories. I did my best to skip over those parts, but that meant I skipped a lot. (I realize this makes me a less than ideal reviewer.) Jentz handles other peoples' stories sensitively, appropriately employing pseudonyms at times. What I appreciated most about the book was Jentz' realization that the crime affected many people besides the direct victims. We are none of us alone. ( )