An inspiring David-and-Goliath story with a strong Christian tone.
The first former gymnast to go public with accusations against convicted sexual predator Larry Nassar refracts her story through the lens of her Christian faith.
Attorney and advocate Denhollander kept hearing two questions after people learned she had been molested by a team doctor for USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University: “How could this happen?” and “Why didn’t you say something sooner?” She answers both in a debut that blends memoir with a true-crime story and blistering critique of how powerful institutions deny, cover up, or mishandle sexual abuse. After suffering an injury at age 15, the author sought help from Nassar, who—without gloves or consent—vaginally penetrated her with his fingers, hiding the assault from her mother (who was in the exam room) by reaching under her baggy shorts or positioning himself strategically between parent and child. Deeply religious, Denhollander knew that the clergy often counseled abuse victims to “forgive and forget.” As she saw it, however, seeking justice “would demonstrate the love of Christ much better.” So she grieved privately until, nearly 16 years later, the Indianapolis Star exposed rampant abuse by gymnastics coaches, which led her to email the paper about Nassar. The floodgates opened after a story on her molestation appeared: Other gymnasts spoke up, the police got involved, and investigators found evidence of years of coverups by USA Gymnastics and MSU. Denhollander’s tone can be overly saccharine—she refers frequently to the “precious” abuse victims—but this is a story of true moral courage that becomes as gripping as a legal thriller in a climactic courtroom scene that has 156 abuse victims testifying against Nassar at his sentencing hearing. Spectators wept as pictures of the witnesses as young gymnasts flashed on a screen; by the end of this book, even the most cynical readers may be reaching for their own tissues.
An inspiring David-and-Goliath story with a strong Christian tone.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4964-4133-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Tyndale Momentum
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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