“Adelaide Piper” by Beth Webb Hart began very differently than it ended. We start out with a literary look back at a girl’s childhood, a memoir of her past, her family, and her thoughts and feelings toward them. She is a poet, and we see many of her perceptions of the world around her through the use of her pen. We stay with her for a time as she grows up, and then goes off to college, and then the tone and the focus of the story changes quite a bit.
She was date-raped while on campus, something that shocked her to her very soul as she hadn’t dated much and didn’t understand much of the ways of the world. As she attempts to figure out what happened and why, she comes into contact with a young man whose sister was also raped, and he has set up a charity called “Rachel’s Rape” to help other young women get the help they need, particularly by funding the installation of panic buttons on campuses around the nation.
Feeling that at last someone understands what she’s been through, Adelaide agrees to marry him, not realizing that in her well-intentioned zeal to help other victims, she is reliving the attack over and over again. Rather than getting the help she needs to move forward productively, she’s dwelling on her experience, not allowing it to leave her mind. When she realizes that she never will heal this way, she breaks things off with her fiancé, realizing also that in his attempts to save her, he’s trying to resurrect his sister. It wasn’t a healthy relationship on either side.
As Adelaide learns to trust God and to reopen her own soul, she also learns that she can help others, but in a way that doesn’t crush her under its weight.
I found this book to be very thought-provoking. While it does deal with the topic of rape, it’s never graphic or crass. The writing is lyrical and smooth, and I appreciated the way the author showed us Adelaide’s internal struggles with herself and with the world around her.
(This book was published in 2006 by WestBow Press.)
Related Blogs:
Coping with Sexual Harassment and Assault
Teen Dating Violence: a Serious Problem