ORIGINALLY PUB: Titletown Publishing, 2/2013
GENRE: Nonfiction/Memoir/True Crime
SETTING: New York & Pennsylvania
MY GRADE: A
FROM PUBLISHER: In 1992, nine-year-old Katie Beers was kidnapped by a family friend and locked in an underground box for 17 days. Katie has now come forward to tell the story that created a national media storm as reporters uncovered the truth about her pre-kidnapping life of neglect and sexual abuse and the details of her rescue. She shares how this experience and the recent death of her kidnapper, John Esposito, has affected her life. Despite the horrible reality of Katie's days of being chained in darkness, the kidnapping was, in fact, the climactic end of a tragic childhood and the beginning of a new life. Katie breaks her silence and reveals her inspiring healing process to the journalist who covered the story of the disappearance more than twenty years ago. "Buried Memories" is the only source that includes the complete details of her traumatic childhood, transcriptions of recordings from Esposito, a first-hand account of how Katie felt after Esposito's death in 2013, and Katie's hopeful view of the future as she looks back into her dark past.
MY THOUGHTS: What a disturbing read. I like that the narration shifts from Katie to Carolyn Gusoff, who was a television reporter who actually covered Katie's case. We get more than one person's perspective on the story. One chapter will be written by Carolyn and will be about her experiences with reporting on this case at the time it was happening, and the next chapter will be written by Katie, and so on throughout the entire book. The revised edition has a few extra chapters with both authors. I thought it was very well written and informative, honest and very sad. There were many black and white photos of most of the people talked about in the book, peppered throughout the book.
The only thing that could have made this book better is if Katie's mother, brother, and piece of sh!t godmother had been interviewed for this. I really would have liked to hear what her brother had to say about his own childhood. A pretty brief summary on this case can be found at Wikipedia. You can see interviews with Katie on Youtube.
This case is similar to one from the 1970's involving a fourteen-year old boy named Paul Martin Andrews.
I received this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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