The best books on abuse

I found the chase in this book exhilarating. Francess, the main character, married the wrong man. When she and her child are constantly living in fear of a beating, she’s compelled to take her son and escape. With precise planning and help, she runs.  

No longer able to work in her chosen field, nursing, she must accept a different job in a strange town while using a new identity. I was interested in seeing how she’d cope. She and her son must adjust to their unfamiliar life, while aware that her husband will never stop tracking them. 

One in every four women and one in seven men experience partner abuse during their lifetimes. In this gem, renowned expert Lundy Bancroft uncovers the myths surrounding this epidemic. He offers victims and their loved ones a deep understanding of the dynamics of an abusive relationship. The book contains tools to help readers dissolve the erroneous thought and behavior patterns that keep them stuck in these harmful relationships and strategies to end them safely. But most importantly, Bancroft reminds them that the abuse is not their fault–that responsibility for the abuse falls squarely on the abuser. Full of insights and helpful resources, this gem is a must-read for anyone who is or suspects they or someone they love is being abused by a partner.

JP Daughton tells the horrifying story of the Congo-Océan railroad, a massive, ill-conceived construction project (1921-34) whose French overseers doomed some 20,000 African workers to die. This story, revealing as it does France’s imperial hubris and callous disregard of human suffering, should have been told a long time ago. But it has been buried by bureaucrats, overlooked by historians, and made invisible to those who chose not to see. We owe Daughton a great debt for bringing it to light and for masterfully adding a new chapter to the tragic history of Central Africa under European colonial rule.

I was afraid this book might be too depressing at first, and kept yelling at the heroine, Barb, to quit feeling sorry for herself and do something already to get her kids back from her domineering ex-husband. But the author’s wry voice drew me in, and this quirky novel is now one of my all-time favorites. Throughout the low times in my life, I’ve found humor to be the best tonic, and bumbling Barb delivers it here. I love how she rises above her seemingly hopeless circumstances by devising a highly questionable but totally kick-ass hilarious scheme to raise some quick cash and reunite with her children. The zany characters and spot-on descriptions of small-town life are guaranteed to boost your mood. 

A historical/legal/poetic examination of the way that African bodies were treated and disposed of in the context of transatlantic slavery and how the author simultaneously advances a process of reclamation. NourbeSe provides a meditation in which silence and space advance our understanding of the gravity and horror of the subject which in no way compares with what the unnamed victims experienced.  She recalls them and names them into existence.

We as a nation and society are on the road to truth and reconciliation. Critical to that journey are stories such as I Am Not a Number. The book tells the heartbreaking story of Irene, the author’s grandmother, and her brothers who were taken away from their home on Nipissing First Nation to live at a residential school, very far from home. At the school, names are not used. All students are known by numbers. This story will inspire important conversations that will help younger generations understand the horrors so many indigenous children endured in the residential schools. It is a dark part of our history, kept secret by past generations, that is only now coming to light through these powerful stories.

Kizzia’s prose and reporting are unequaled, but this dark, Gothic tale is hard to read because of the real-life horror it exposes. The Pilgrim family came to Alaska in 2002, wrapping themselves in fundamentalist Christianity and fighting with the federal government like true pioneers in the wilderness—they became a cause for the right because of how they seemed to fulfill Alaska’s frontier myth. But it turned out the patriarch of the family had created a weird prison of rape and abuse for his uneducated children, which Kizzia was able to get inside with vividly told scenes. And that truth tells us even more about Alaska, which has the worst rate of rape in the nation and a shocking level of child abuse. 

In this novel that feels ripped straight from the headlines, the life of a young woman training as an elite gymnast is upended when her best friend confides that their doctor has assaulted her. Not only is this story timely, but it provides a glimpse into the mind-boggling discipline and talent it takes to be an Olympic gymnast.

Dolly Parton and James Patterson partnered to write this suspenseful story about a runaway girl who arrives in Nashville with dreams of making it big, but who is shadowed by the constant fear of being found by her abuser. After begging for stage time at bars, she is discovered by a retired celebrity who pulls her into the spotlight—which in turn draws the attention of the man who wants to kill her.

I have a special fondness for Dolly Parton because she endorsed my novel, which is also about a teenage girl getting mixed up with a guy who, like Dolly’s character, has murderous intent. In a beautiful handwritten note, Dolly Parton declared, “I’m proud my song "Joshua" inspired the character Beard.”