Reviews
LIBRARY JOURNAL
APRIL 2007
Madden, Amy. Stolen Beauty: Healing the Scars of Child Abuse; One Woman’s Journey. Syren. Apr. 2007. c.214p. ISBN 978-0-929636-74-0. pap. $14.95. PSYCH
An accomplished travel writer and mother of three, Madden offers one of the most heart-wrenching accounts of surviving child abuse ever written. When she was just six, her stepfather began abusing her sexually, physically, verbally, and emotionally. Besides relating episodes of that abuse, Madden explains how she came to understand better her horrible experiences and let go of her anger (at her mother) and hatred (of her stepfather and herself). After her stepfather remarried, he was convicted of abusing the children of his next wife, and Madden’s testimony at his trial is riveting. Her reflections on the healing process and her astounding capacity for forgiveness are a highlight of this hard-to-put-down tearjerker; her resounding faith in herself is a marvelous anthem for other victims of child abuse. Madden ends with solid recommendations toward making child abuse prevention everyone’s business. With its insightful reminiscences, her work presents a more personal perspective than can be found in Annie G. Rogers’s The Unsayable, and it will appeal to fans of Augusten Burroughs’s Running with Scissors. Essential for all public libraries and academic libraries supporting the helping professions.
Dale Farris, Groves, TX