What A Body Remembers: A Memoir of Sexual Assault and Its Aftermath

(Paperback)

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Confirmed June pick for The Nervous BreakdownBlurbs coming from Rene Denfeld, author of The Child Finder and The Enchanted, Samantha Dunn, author of Not By Accident, Susan Henderson, author of Up From The Blue and The Flicker of Old Dreams, Antonia Crane, author of Spent, and Charles M. Sevilla, author of Disorder In The CourtPersonal essays for The Rumpus, The Nervous Breakdown, and more

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 unforgettableand 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 timesa voice for women who have lived through an assaulttaking 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 liveseven 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 Remembersher autobiographic account of sexual assault, frustratingly unsatisfactory legal maneuvering, and a lifetime of reverberations from bothall leading to a decades later heart stopping discovery. Stefanos writing style accessibly conveys the complex challenges in coping with trauma in her lifes 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

"Stefanos 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

Author Bio

Karen Stefano is the author of the forthcoming memoir, What A Body Remembers (Rare Bird Books 2019). She is the author of the short story collection The Secret Games of Words (1GlimpsePress 2015) and the how-to business writing guide, Before Hitting Send (Dearborn 2011). Her work has appeared in Ms. Magazine, California Lawyer, Psychology Today, The South Carolina Review, Tampa Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, Epiphany, and elsewhere. She is also a JD/MBA with more than twenty years of complex litigation experience. To learn more about Karen and her writing, please visit http://stefanokaren.com.