Strange Piece of Paradise | 
 enlarge | Author: Terri Jentz
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  74 reviews
Sales Rank: 158427
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 752
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.5 x 1.5
ISBN: 0312426690
Dewey Decimal Number: 305
EAN: 9780312426699
ASIN: 0312426690
Publication Date: March 20, 2007
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Condition: Paperback, brand new. Clean and unbent cover and pages. Ships next business day!
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Product Description
In the summer of 1977, Terri Jentz and her Yale roommate took a cross-country bike trip. As they lay sleeping in the central Oregon desert, a man in a pickup truck deliberately ran over their tent and proceeded to attack them with an axe. The horrific crime was reported in newspapers across the country, but no one was ever arrested. Fifteen years later, Jentz returns to the small town where she was nearly murdered and makes an extraordinary discovery: the violence of that night is as present for the community as it is for her. Shockingly, many say they know who did it, and he is living freely in their midst.
Powerful, eloquent, and paced like the most riveting of thrillers, Strange Piece of Paradise is a startling profile of a psychopath, a sweeping reflection on violence and the myth of American individualism, and a moving record of Jentz's brave inner journey from violence to hope.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 69 more reviews...
 Is this a book that needed more editing? May 5, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The story of what happened to Jentz is horrible and makes for great drama. The aftermath -- her search for her still-unknown attacker, which is the main subject of the book -- could have made a decent story as well. Unfortunately the drama of it is oversold, and the story is wildly overwritten, both in length and in tone. Jentz's discovery of a prime suspect is unfortunately larded over with melodramatic writing -- those of you who've waded through the book know the title of this review is a reference to the dozens and dozens of "In Search of"-like rhetorical questions -- and a level of self-obsessiveness that, while understandable in a person's diary, should not have made it into the final version. Perhaps the editor wanted to provide an open window into how messed up Jentz became as a result of the attack; perhaps only the actual publication of far too much detail could provide her with the catharsis that she absolutely deserves. Anyone with a heart would wish Jentz peace after what she went through. But her story lost much of its power in the telling.
True Catharsis April 23, 2008
A lot of reviewers stated that this was too redundant, that the author tended to go on and on over the same territory, and that the story could have been completed in a lot fewer words. After reading this story, I have found that I was "hooked" and that this story lingers on long after the final page is turned. It is a haunting story made all the more engrossing by the fact that it is a totally truthful accounting of one woman's attempt to identify her attacker - to identify the person who hacked her and her friend up with a hatchet and left them both for dead. I understand completely her need to do so, as well as I understand completely her friend's need not to do so. This was a catharsis for the author, and a much needed one. I can identify with this. I believe had I been the one this happened to, I would also want to know the who and the why of this terrible crime. My hat is off to this very brave lady, and I feel that this book is well worth the read! You cannot truly be a critic of this manuscript unless you yourself have experienced the same as this author.
Empowering Herself By Defusing Evil April 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Imagine being 20 years old, on the first real adventure of your young life, sleeping soundly after a strenuous bike journey...only to be awakened and find yourself under a truck, staring at the well-dressed torso of a cowboy yielding an ax. That is what Terri Jentz, the author of this amazing book, asks us to envision.
She and her friend, renamed Shayna, process the aftermath in two different ways. Shayna has selective amnesia based on her injuries, and is unable -- and unwilling -- to confront what has occurred. Terri, on the other hand, after several years of ennui and fear, decides to courageously confront the episode and to try to make some sense of it in order to fully heal.
This journey is what comprises this book. Interestingly, the individuals she meets again -- ranging from the teenage couple who helped save them to the nurses who were there when they reached the hospital -- were all permanently affected by this senseless act. Together again, they all help heal each other. The would-be murderer himself is larger than life and also so much smaller than life. One of the tragedies is that most of the town knew who did it, and yet, thanks to the bungling of three overlapping law enforcement agencies and overprotective parents, his act would never have been totally revealed were it not for Terri's perseverance.
This is a courageous book from a tenacious individual, and it spans 700 pages. I truly understand why Terri Jentz needed to write this book in its entirety, but I believe she needed a better editor. It lags in the middle pages, as Terri meets up with one after another lead (some true, some false); the momentum of the story begins to drag as a result. There is also very little reflection on her personal life -- the key focus is outward, not inward. We know that Terri is gay and she had an unrequited crush on Shayna. There is certain anger that Shayna is unwilling to be the "perfect listener" and to explore the ramifications of that June 22 night. I also wonder how Terri's sexual orientation played out in a conservative, cowboy town, when young women were blamed for their own independence. But these are minor points: all in all, I greatly admire Terri Jentz's courage and her larger observations on our society's passion for violence. She has important things to say.
 Shall haunt me all my days March 19, 2008
The random 1977 crime horrified all who heard about it, although the girls survived. I even read about it when I lived in Chicago. Yet after days, months & decades though the Cline Falls community knew who'd done it, authorities never prosecuted anyone. Why? In this extraordinarily eloquent & riveting memoir of the author's life & times before & after that innocent bicycle trip that ended a hair's breadth shy of murder, she records her emotional reality & her 20 year search for the man who devastated her young self. I thought it quite unsentimental & engagingly intense. Sit back & immerse yourself in this writer's record of her quest for the rest of her soul, of her return to Oregon & the leads to who knew & helped her back then, who investigated the crime & why it was closed. With her you'll meet all sorts of people who could connect the dots of the perpetrator's violent life before & after he attacked her &, incidentally, you'll be at her side when he is at last brought to some semblance of justice, although not for his crime against her. A haunting & satisfying read by someone who knows how to write well & has an astonishing tale to tell. Very well done.
Almost worth its weight in gold September 15, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
In 1977, Yale undergrad Terri Jentz and a school friend began bicycling across America, starting from the Oregon coast. Seven days into the trip, over the Cascades and into the desert, an axeman ran over their tent and nearly killed them both. How both women survived, in very different ways, is the core of "Strange Piece of Paradise", an epic-length personal journey and exploration of the criminal underside of a small Western town.
Jentz spends the first 200 pages of the paperback edition on her life story and the next 500 on her return to Oregon as she belatedly uncovers the would-be killer's identity. She spent most of the 1990s interviewing witnesses, law enforcement, private citizens, and finally, the alleged attacker's inner circle -- a parade of victimized women. Although she never directly confronts her attacker, he's memorably described (although his pseudonym in the book is not quite as evocative as his real name).
There's much political activism, too. Jentz presents herself as both liberal and tough on crime. I think it would be hard for anyone to disagree with her conclusions. She's particularly hard on the overloaded misdemeanor branch of American criminal justice. As this is where I began my legal career just after law school, I'm impressed by her points -- she figured this out a lot faster than I did!
Jentz's personal journey is just as moving. Even before the attack, her feelings about her traveling companion are well preserved on page. The women drift apart quickly after the attack; Jentz' quiet devestation is stunningly portrayed.
About the only complaint I can muster about the book is the same I had with Aron Ralston's Between a Rock and a Hard Place. For a book that tells such an important, personal story, it really could stand some editing. Jentz's repeated epiphanies and similes and metaphors pull away from the narrative and wear down the reader. Witness this typical aside, late in the game on page 613:
"Along with flying TV pictures and radio waves, something else that connected us was vibrating in the air, as though our minds had reached out in a field beyond ourselves, pulling us with invisible rubber bands toward those who shared our preoccupations."
Huh?
That said, "Strange Piece of Paradise" is exhaustive but not exhausting, full of wit and outrage, and will stay with you for a long, long time.
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