This Q&A evolved out of a conversation between author Debora Harding and Bloomsbury USA in June 2020.
What inspired you to write the book?
I began writing the book several years after the catastrophic loss of my fourteen-year-old son, Kadian, in a sudden bicycle accident. You might say it became imperative to my survival that I separate the existential questions left from the trauma of my childhood—from the task of learning to cope with the sudden tragedy of having lost my gorgeous son. I barely survived being murdered at the age of fourteen. On top of my grief at Kadian being suddenly taken from us, the paradox of losing him at the same age seemed cruel.
When I started writing again, my brain, my emotional compass—none of it worked the way it once had. I literally had to learn how to put sentences together again. Additionally, after spending two years in heavy grief I found myself reemerging into the world at a time when the political landscape was rapidly changing, when a network of social safety, which had been established in a progressive political era when decency and care and concern for your fellow citizen was a kind of presumed starting point, was being destroyed. It felt familiar, like the dysfunctional and threatening environment I had grown up in. Donald Trump and my mother are very similar in personality. And watching his dismissal of assaults on women as irrelevant was mortifying.
I returned to thinking about the issues of mental illness and violence that complicated the long-term aftermath of the crime. This wasn’t my first attempt at writing about this subject. But I was compelled to look at the forces that came into play with a wider lens. I had to arrive at place of total irreverence for my past pain to find my true voice and what I felt to be a storytelling structure that could encompass the social and political conflicts that acted themselves out, not only in my journey but in my parents’ journey, and in that of my attacker, Mr. K (Mr. K for kidnapper). Today, the question of what enables a person to inflict savage acts of violence on others seems as pertinent as ever. And the devastating increase of domestic violence cases we’ve seen during the coronavirus lockdown only makes it more urgent.
What literary role models did you look to in writing this book?
It was on my journey back to the world, after I hadn’t been able to pick up a book for several years, that I came across the Essays of Michel de Montaigne. A sixteenth-century French aristocrat might seem odd company to choose, but his material was a perfect match for my mood. He combined wit with erudition, while maintaining intimacy with his reader, and wrote about philosophical themes of his day. As I continued to read it occurred to me that I recognized something familiar in the special perspective from which he viewed life, and I discovered that he had written his first draft while suffering serious grief after multiple losses of key relationships in his life.
While there lay great contrast in our social and political backgrounds—he a sixteenth-century aristocrat, a man of letters with an extraordinary intellect; and me, a twenty-first-century woman with my humble background—we shared the task of finding our way home. So that was the initial inspiration and the reason for the title structure: “In Which I . . .” It helped me focus on the theme at hand. His humor also gave me permission to adopt an irreverent attitude to my material.
Toni Morrison—Beloved is a genius of a novel, especially in her treatment of the legacy of human cruelty and trauma and the way it can revisit and terrify its victims. But it’s Morrison’s essays and lectures that served as my moral compass in helping to make choices about how to deal with the issues of racial identity in the book.
Vivian Gornick also helped influence choices I made about structure. Her memoir Fierce Attachments works as much on the level of essay as it does an incredible portrait of a challenging mother-daughter relationship and a 1940s immigrant neighborhood in the Bronx.
I also looked to Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, but for different reasons. I’ve always identified with Nancy Clutter, the sixteen-year-old who was murdered. As a victim of a severe crime myself, I have often wondered how she might have told her story. Part of my motivation for stepping into Mr. K’s point of view was to demonstrate what a recalibrated scale of empathy for a violent offender in a true crime story might look like. And I suppose I hope that in doing so, people might think a little harder about the victims missing from these stories.
In the telling of the story, you have written episodes leading up to the crime and episodes after the crime from your kidnapper’s point of view. This had to have been difficult as a victim. Can you speak about this decision?
This book, for me, is an interrogation of violence and mental illness. More specifically, how we reconcile ourselves to the complexity of relationship issues that follow acts of human cruelty.
There’s an unspoken assumption if you are a victim, writing a memoir about a crime, that it must come from some therapeutic need to share; that you are offering your subjective experience in the case it may be helpful for others on the same journey. There’s a sort of pressure for victims to stay in our lane, and I wasn’t interested in that. I’ve endeavored to tell the story of four characters and their relationships to one another, from a detached objective viewpoint.
I had a rare set of journalistic sources. And with forty years of distance from the crime, a multilayered perspective, and something important to say about violence levels in America for those with a professional or emotional stake in the issue. And I wanted to do it in a literary way. I was sorely tempted to hide behind fiction but decided, given the times, it was important to claim this story as truth. I also wanted the story accessible for a reader, something they could pick up at the end of the day. This is a dark story—but I wanted it to feel light, even funny at times—something with the pacing of a psychological thriller.
Each of the vignettes from my kidnapper’s perspective is crafted from witness statements, police reports, newspaper articles, and the journal taken by a friend of mine who unwittingly worked with him in prison. I didn’t have this information before I entered the Victim Offender Dialogue, twenty-five years after the crime. And it proved incredibly helpful in dispelling the power my attacker had over my life. I think the veracity of these sources provides an important power for the reader as well.
Later, when I imagined bringing my kidnapper to life in this book, it no longer felt like the story belonged to just me. And I liked that. Perhaps the best way to see it from a storytelling perspective is to imagine what would be missing from the narrative without my attacker’s point of view. I felt it important to show, not tell, how extraordinarily ordinary violent acts can be. And having grown up with a violent parent, I am used to detaching myself emotionally from situations in order to survive. That skill served me well here. Writing those sections wasn’t easy. I felt nauseous the entire time I was doing it. But I felt what I was doing important enough to carry it through to the end.
In the book, you explore idea of forgiveness through a wide range of relationships, from your mother and father to your attacker. Do you think forgiveness ought to be the goal?
In some cases, having forgiveness as a goal can lead to devastating impacts, especially when dealing with individuals who have a proven track record of violence. It can also be used to dodge more difficult feelings like anger, rage, deep sorrow, and grief, which can have long-term mental health ramifications.
One of the things demanded of a victim, a victim of any crime, is that they try and make sense of a moral universe that allows them to continue in life in a meaningful way—in the society in which they must act. To make peace with forces that have personally annihilated the self is no easy matter. It demands that you step back from your viewpoint and see where the crime fits in the larger societal picture. And it is not an easy path to walk. But it is where healing grace lies. This, to me, is forgiveness, but in a much more objective sense. To understand how deeply impersonal being a victim is, one has to learn to hold the darkest side of human nature in hand with the most sublime. And to accept the whole.
Did your ideas about forgiveness change over the course of writing the book?
As I moved through the story, what became clear to me was that the breakdown of communication between my father and I was primarily about differences in our approach to forgiveness.
He viewed forgiveness in the biblical sense. For him, Jesus’s last words—“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”—meant unconditional pardon as well as unconditional love. He acknowledged that my mother’s violence when we were growing up was real, even though he wasn’t around to see it, but he could not acknowledge that what enabled her violence in the first place—her inability to see other people’s pain—was a here-and-now problem. He insisted she had changed, when all signs in her relationship to my sister and my grandmother, and with him, pointed to something different.
He therefore saw my taking action to protect myself and my children from my mother as being motivated by anger, bitterness, and judgment, an unwillingness to let go of the past. As an act of aggression even, not one of self-preservation and for my mental health. It kept us locked in a repeated cycle of miscommunication, with no way to reconcile the relationship and an ultimately devastating ending.
We all have inclination to want justice when we have been wronged, but you had the rare experience of working through this within the criminal justice system. Your participation in what is often referred to as “restorative justice” through a Victim Offender Dialogue program gave you the opportunity to hear directly from your kidnapper—not only about the crime, but also about his circumstances and experiences. Do you think this changed your perception of what justice is?
The gains that the restorative justice movement has made changed my life as a victim. Without the theoretical foundations that have accompanied the movement, the Victim Offender Dialogue (VOD) program would not have been on offer in Nebraska. It allows the state legal system to acknowledge the crushing psychological aftermath of the journey and the long-term impact that victims are left to deal with after a crime.
One of the difficult things about being a victim of a crime perpetrated by a stranger is the who, the why, and the how. Being able to not only give a name and face to the man who attacked me, but also to understand how he came to attack me, proved pivotal to my recovery from PTSD. It helped put to rest the existential anxiety and terror that would return to me every night in my dreams. Though it wasn’t a part of the VOD process and didn’t happen by plan—it took place after I testified against him being paroled and for good reason, he wasn’t considered safe—I found that meeting my offender face-to-face was empowering.
It’s important not to minimize the role of prosecution and sentencing for the victim, which is a critical component of justice. I have had an unusual experience as victim in both prosecution and sentencing—the man who kidnapped me was a stranger. I was a child. He was arrested and charged ten days after the crime. I never had to appear in court. It was the State of Nebraska that brought the case against him. He served what I felt a sentence fitting the crime. Thankfully child kidnappings by strangers that end in sexual assault—and, more often than not, death—are rare. But there are many victims and families of severe crime who experience the further trauma of miscarried justice—when the state fails to bring charges or prosecute those responsible for violent crimes. And when justice fails to bring to account those that hurt other people, it inflicts a whole other level of suffering.
Ironically, Mr. K was the one who unwittingly shone the light on another violent abuser—my mother. There are few cases in domestic violence where the perpetrators are brought to justice. They prey on family members, and often don’t cross the line into the public realm, so it’s difficult to hold them into account. Without being aware of it, Mr. K confirmed my memory and instincts, which enabled me to make the much more difficult choice to protect myself and my children from my mother.
You made a choice to not reveal the racial identity of your kidnapper until halfway through the book. And then at the end say this was not an easy decision as we don’t live in a colorblind society. Can you share your thinking behind this?
America is a violently racist country. I’m deeply concerned with the quantifiable rise of violent incidents connected to white supremacy in the States, especially since Donald Trump has come to power. These groups are considered the number one domestic terror threat in America today. They are violent criminal gangs who prey on our communities. I am extremely fortunate that my whiteness insulates me from the harm of daily structural racism, though knowing we are failing to protect others and are making little progress toward changing systemic racism is a low-level pain.
As I considered the potential ramifications of revealing my attacker’s racial identity in today’s political environment, it was enough to sidestep the issue altogether. How important was his racial identity to the story? Then I considered omitting every mention my offender makes of his being violently attacked by racists, one of the few allusions to his racial identity in the story, and the consequence of that wasn’t good either. To view crimes outside of their political and social context is to make it appear as though violence springs mysteriously from nowhere, and that’s just not the case.
My challenge was to write responsibly about a violent criminal acting within a deeply racist society; to dodge the racial elements in the story would be to err on the wrong side of the issue I try so hard to responsibly address: that human beings who commit monstrous acts of violence do so not because they were once victims, but simply because they do not care that they hurt other people. The stresses are always a contributing factor—but never the cause.
I wrestled with this question for a year, reading eloquent authors on the subject—James Baldwin, bell hooks, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Reni Eddo-Lodge, Ibram X. Kendi, to name a few. Toni Morrison, in particular, was hugely helpful to me. She suggested that to make an issue of racial identity in a character at the beginning of the book is to immediately limit the moral universe the reader perceives them to operate in. They will no longer be granted the same range of agency, of free will. And they will become cardboard characters rather than fully fleshed human beings.
Eventually, I identified three people who made decisions about the importance of Mr. K’s racial identity and how it affected his actions.
First, there was the violent criminal himself who claimed it was responsible for a good deal of his choices. He told me the racially motivated sexual assault he experienced in an adult prison holding tank at the age of fourteen was a contributing factor to the rage he let leash on me. And for years after his imprisonment, he claimed that kidnapping and sexual assault charges lodged against him were a complaint from my racist father, who couldn’t stomach the idea that we were in a romantic relationship. He was believed by many, as the details of police records are kept confidential, even from prison staff.
Second, there was me—did I view him as having less moral agency as a human being because of his racial identity? No. And I would invite anyone who suggests he does to reexamine their reasons for thinking so, because it has implications for every other citizen struggling with the injustices that blackness creates in this society.
Third, there is the reader—the reader being both the person who has the book in their hand, and the society in which the book is received. In the end, I decided to let the issue of his racial identity emerge authentically, in the manner it actually did, and let the reader consider the issues it may or may not raise for them.
My mother co-opted the feminist narrative in the same way my offender did. She claimed she labored under a societal oppression that made her violent. As an anti-racist and a feminist, I hope I’ve done the job responsibly. I would not let these two violent oppressors use political narratives to hide their cruelty. I would not let them trump my right to tell this story.
Mental illness and violence are part of your family history and you have experienced the physical manifestations of unprocessed trauma. Do you see any links between these experiences?
The human body’s somatic response to chronic stress is genius. And its ability to take over the controls when we are out of alignment with our emotions can be terrifying. I was extremely skeptical of the idea that my partial seizures were the result of unconsciously programmed responses to a sensorial perceived threat, and that it was my body’s way of pushing the reset button. They were shaming and humiliating. And my debilitating depression and the other sudden manifestations of PTSD were the same.
It’s hard to be interested in the emotions of your inner world when you are functioning at a high level and are genuinely happy in other areas of your life. Especially when you have survived severe trauma. It’s completely counterintuitive to want to reexamine the narrative you’ve told yourself to keep functioning. Life is hard enough as it is.
In my case, it was easier to tell myself that my mother’s mental illness excused her violence and psychological cruelty than it was to accept the fact that she was comfortable with her behavior, comfortable with who she was and, despite my father’s claims to the contrary, had not changed. My mother experienced psychotic episodes and depression, but the treatment of these symptoms did not cure her of her lethal lack of interest in the emotions of others. My continuing to engage with her, as well as offering her a relationship with my family and children, set off my symptoms of PTSD and depression.
And then I went on medication and internalized the dysfunction of my relationship with my parents, rather than do the real work I needed to do, which meant adjusting my relationships and environment. That’s not to say I’m not thankful for medication—it’s still in my life—but I no longer see it as the cure for my mental health problems. Instead, it lightens the load.
You now have a family of your own and have worked through past trauma to create a loving and supportive environment for both yourself and your loved ones. What advice would you give readers who have experienced abuse or trauma to overcome the obstacles attached to it?
I don’t think we have enough stories out there that portray “victims” realistically. Human resiliency is an amazing thing. My healing was encumbered by my dysfunctional family, but even as a child I had enough people in the community to get me through the most painful phases of growing up. So I suppose I’d say take risks in vulnerability. And know you aren’t alone. There are so many of us—high-functioning, emotionally intelligent, resilient survivors and caring individuals—who know your pain. And there are innumerable tools and people to help. It takes time and tinkering and failure to get emotional balance right—you’re building a multilayered system of support. Don’t underestimate the task at hand, learn self-compassion, and never let go of hope.
On sale September 22, 2020