On a summer night in 1984 nineteen year old UC Berkeley sophomore Karen Thomas leaves her uniformed patrol job at the University of California Police Department and walks home alone in darkness. At the threshold of her apartment a man assaults her at knife point. After a soul chilling struggle she manages to escape and call 911. Police catch her assailant, she identifies him, and he is arrested.
Though she survived the emotionally devastating assault, she is plunged into an incomprehensible reality: she's unhinged by the sound of footsteps slapping concrete, terrified of the dark, and yet she pays her rent and clings to a shaky identity by wearing a police uniform, working for a police department, patrolling the dark streets of a sprawling campus and crime-ridden city, walking other women home to safety. Her only protection is her uniform.
Traumatizing her further is the crash course she receives on the flaws of our criminal justice system. She testifies at her attacker's preliminary hearing, then suffers through a scathing cross examination at jury trial. Six weeks later, in another absurd twist of fate, she herself is nearly arrested and prosecuted. Through all of this she feels completely alone, unable to reach out to her mother for support, and jeopardizing the relationship with her lover with all her strangling, clinging need.
Ironically, she herself goes on to become a criminal defense lawyer, defending people accused of crimes as heinous as the one committed against her.
Fast forward 2014, thirty years after her assault, when her life, once again, appears to be crumbling. As she stumbles her way through the days, navigating a dying marriage, devastating financial loss, and an elderly mother slipping into dementia at disheartening speed, she becomes fascinated by her own anxiety, by the PTSD still triggered by the sound of footsteps and she wonders, why does the body remember what the mind tries so desperately to forget? Her questions prompt an obsession with her assailant: Whatever became of him? What is he doing now? She begins a quest of excavation, determined to find out, tracking down the police report and court file from her case, and on the thirtieth anniversary of her attack returns to Berkeley and the scene of her assault. What she discovers is life altering.
What A Body Remembers is the intimate memoir of a woman's traumatic past catching up with her, an honest, from-the-gut account of one woman's journey to regain her power and confidence-a journey that continues to this day.
Industry Reviews
"Why can't she get over it?" "Why can't she just move on?" Karen Stefano will make you understand exactly why. In this taut, riveting memoir Stefano brings you into the life of a woman in the wake of a violent assault. Tortured by what-ifs and the terrifying awareness of her own vulnerability, Stefano becomes obsessed with knowing all she can about the compounding forces that create her "habit of fear." Arresting, compelling, her journey culminates in an unexpected grace that strangely blooms out of that awful assault. This story is necessary and unforgettable-and arrives at just the right time."
-Samantha Dunn, author of Not By Accident
"Karen Stefano's What A Body Remembers is a gripping, upending thing of beauty. Her memoir serves as a battle cry for our times-a voice for women who have lived through an assault-taking the reader along the jagged path to healing to the shock of tracking down the assailant to the truth her body carried all along. Profound, courageous, and deeply validating."
-Susan Henderson, bestselling author of The Flicker of Old Dreams and Up from the Blue
"An honest, nuanced look at what it means to carry on after a traumatic event."
-Kirkus
"Stefano's memoir is raw and wrenching, but her solid, candid writing invites readers into this testament to her experience."
-Shelf Awareness
"What A Body Remembers is a gut-wrenching walk back into a terrifying past in order to find peace with with tomorrow. This is a harrowing but ultimately transformative story about reclaiming the events that have shaped our lives-even the traumatic ones. Karen Stefano writes with verve and delicacy, as well as astonishing honesty. Read this book!"-Rene Denfeld, internationally bestselling author of The Child Finder
"After her superb debut book, The Secret Games of Words, Karen Stefano returns with What a Body Remembers-her autobiographic account of sexual assault, frustratingly unsatisfactory legal maneuvering, and a lifetime of reverberations from both-all leading to a decades later heart stopping discovery. Stefano's writing style accessibly conveys the complex challenges in coping with trauma in her life's journey: from victim to survivor to successful lawyer and author. Highly recommended."
-Charles M. Sevilla, author of Wilkes on Trial and Wilkes, His Life and Crimes
"Stefano's stunning What A Body Remembers illuminates the fuzzy memory of terror into concise forensic clarity, and it leaps into prose like a great revenge song."
-Antonia Crane, author of the memoir Spent
