Review of I Will Find You

 I Will Find You 

by Joanna Connors 

c2016, 255 pages

This book evokes several descriptive terms, such as provocative, disturbing, annoying, none of which paint a  complete picture of this book which accounts a horrible event.  

The book tells the story of Joanna Connors, a 30 year old reporter who in 1984 is the victim of a sexual assault by a stranger  and on the surface is a clear and unflinching look at her assault. The book goes into detail about the assault, the immediate psychological aftermath, the capture, the legal issues, the trial, the response of family, her attitudes, thoughts, and feelings. 
She approaches things from a reporter’s agenda but with interpersonal thoughts and first person experience woven into the story. I say on the surface because the book recounts something deeper, she is looking to gain information about her attacker because as she says on page 27 " I needed to make sense of my rape." and " I wanted this random act of rape to have meaning". 

The book is not 100% linear and jumps a little between snippets of the assault, to present day back to the trial, forward to present, etc.  The book is highly readable and somewhat compelling in that I really want to find out what her conclusions are. Unfortunately and regrettably, she doesn’t come to a conclusion of the event having any greater significance or meaning. Oh, yes, she uncovers the WHY…as in why was her attacker, David, a monster but any universal tapestry meaning is never found.

There is a lot of freight to this story; it is almost a text book, case study for commonalities of an assault.

1. The self blame and guilt. Why did I go into an abandoned theatre?
2. The indifference with most of the law enforcement interaction. Getting this guy wasn’t high on their priorities and if it wasn’t for the campus police, he might not have been caught.
3. The coldness of the interview and forensic rape collection process. Truly horrible. The woman has just been horribly raped and they’re going to require intimate interaction. How can that not be re-traumatizing.
4. The lack of support in walking through the legal process from a victims point of view. The prosecutors meets with them, discusses the case, explains what’s going to happen, lays out potentially hard questions but at no point is there any discussion over whether or not the process is healthy for her healing.
5. The search for greater meaning which  I've heard other crime victims say when confronted with violent crime especially assault, that is, is there some greater significance to the event?
6. The usual response of the significant other or intimate family members. In the book the husband wants to get revenge, payback, justice whatever you want to label it.  He actually starts the process of hiring a hit man to take David out in the prison.  Not only does this undermine the authors road to recovery and take back her power of choice, it also undermines the trust in the husbands decision making ability. It was a dumb idea but common.
7. The hypersensitivity to potential threats around her. She recounts on page 90 listening to every creak and noise in the house. Is he coming back? Did he find me?  Her fear of strangers or of black males.
8. The push/pull of “ stay close but don’t touch me” with her husband. The affects on a relationship usually don’t bode well for the couple. I believe the book recounts 80% don’t stay together and in the end, they do not either.
9.  Feeling shame in retelling her story as if she did something wrong to cause it to happen.
10. The projection of potential threats around her children. Her fear of something bad happening again and trying to balance freedom and protection. 

 

Some general thoughts…
- While investigating the life and history of her attacker, she uncovers a nightmare of family dysfunction.  Mothers having 8 -9 kids born into poverty and have 20+ grandchildren, also born into poverty. A patriarch grandfather figure who was an alcoholic, drug user, pimp, felon, severe abuser passing down his dysfunction to his children’s children. People whose only thought is partying, drugs, crime and passing on their sickness to others.

-As a reporter and one who is married to a reporter who handles the crime beat she comes across as rather naïve. I guess, maybe, because at the time ( 1984) there wasn’t a lot publicity about rape she expresses several notions that make me puzzled. For example, she has preconceived notions about how a rape is supposed to be, surprised by the reactions of law enforcement, unknowledgeable about the legal system, no idea of what the fall out of rape is. She seems caught unawares of 5,10 years down the road how the rape would begin to warp her dynamics.

- This isn’t a book about her recovery and healing as it is more an investigation into  what could have produced such a monster. She glosses over the PTSD, the nightmares, the warping on the dynamics with her family, the fallout with the husband, the effects on her.  She starts and stops several therapies.

- She spends a significant part of the book ( and tips her hand ) sharing with the reader the injustices of the poor, black citizens at the hands of the justice system, police, laws, crime and poverty.

- She never once discusses any thought of self-preservation. If she did think about it, she never puts it in writing. As a self-defense instructor, I shake my head at this.  If your car slid on ice, wouldn’t you want to buy better tires? She talks about David finding her, after all that was the threat, but she never discusses home fortification, a self defense class, weapons training. How could you not ?

In conclusion, this could be titled….” Can you choose your way out of your destiny?” Her goal was to find her attacker and why he was the monster he was and she did.  Generations of horrible people but she never really assigns blame to David but instead leads the reader to the unspoken conclusion that society and family made him that way – what other choice did he have ?  “… and that he took that violence and damage with him when he went out into the world at the age of twelve”. (pg 250)

She says something pretty outrageous.

“  When I started my search my husband said “ He’s a monster. Why do you want to know anything more?” I think I wanted to know the monster in myself, the monster born in 1984. The monster is clever. Elusive. It doesn’t show itself by taking a child into a church to rape her, or beating a son. This monster lurks so far in the background, no one knows it’s there. It infused me with fear, a fear that made me hide from the world and harbor malign suspicions of other people. “ (pg 250)

So she equates her traumatic response, that she didn’t chose to have inflicted on her, to that of rape and beating ?   A traumatic response is not something that is chosen or decided upon. If you are hypersensitive, don’t like to be touched, have a fear of strangers is not the same as making a conscious choice to share your poison with anyone else.