Purchase

Amazon

Add to Wish List

Also by Terri Jentz:

Strange Piece of Paradise, May 2006
Hardcover

STRANGE PIECE OF PARADISE
By: Terri Jentz

A return to the american west to investigate my attempted murder--and solve the riddle of myself.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
May 2006
560 pages
ISBN: 0374134987
Hardcover
Add to Wish List

Non-Fiction Memoir

In the summer of 1977, Terri Jentz and her Yale roommate, Shayna Weiss, make a cross-country bike trip. They pitch a tent in the desert of central Oregon. As they are sleeping, a man in a pickup truck deliberately runs over the tent. He then attacks them with an ax. The horrific crime is reported in newspapers across the country. No one is ever arrested. Both women survive, but Shayna suffers from amnesia, while Terri is left alone with memories of the attack. Their friendship is shattered.

Fifteen years later, Terri returns to the small town where she was nearly murdered, on the first of many visits she will make "to solve the crime that would solve me." And she makes an extraordinary discovery: the violence of that night is as present for the community as it is for her. Slowly, her extensive interviews with the townspeople yield a terrifying revelation: many say they know who did it, and he is living freely in their midst. Terri then sets out to discover the truth about the crime and its aftermath, and to come to terms with the wounds that broke her life into a before and an after. Ultimately she finds herself face-to-face with the alleged axman.

Media Buzz

Montel - March 8, 2007
News and Notes with Ed Gordon - July 17, 2006
All Things Considered - July 13, 2006
Talk of the Nation - May 29, 2006
Good Morning America - May 5, 2006
Primetime Live - May 4, 2006