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On a summer night in 1984 nineteen year old UC Berkeley sophomore Karen Thomas leaves her uniformed patrol job at the UC 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.
But 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. Through all of it she feels completely alone.
Ironically, she herself later goes on to become a criminal defense lawyer, defending people accused of crimes as heinous as the one committed against her.
Fast-forward to 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 a delayed obsession with her assailant: Whatever became of him? What is he doing now? She begins a quest of excavation, determined to track him down. 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 that woman's journey to regain her power and confidence --a journey continuing to this day.
Advance praise for What A Body Remembers:
“What A Body Remembers is a gut-wrenching walk back into a terrifying past in order to find peace 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
"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
"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, award winning author of Not By Accident: Reconstructing a Careless Life; Faith in Carlos Gomez: A Memoir of Salsa, Sex and Salvation; and Failing Paris
"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 Spent
“After her superb debut story collection, The Secret Games of Words, Karen Stefano returns with What a Body Remembers—her autobiographical 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
