Anyone's Daughter: The Times and Trials of Patricia Hearst

by Shana Alexander

Additional Information about Anyone's Daughter by Shana Alexander (1979, Book)

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction

564 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Slagle Rock]

Shana Alexandder was a good writer but this book bogged down with too much trial minutae. It was published in the late 1970s and perhaps there would have been more appetite for the blow-by-blow from the weeks that comprised the Patty Hearst trial, but I was looking for more historical perspective on the story. I didn't get that perspecive and found myself losing interest the further I read. No stars because I couldn't finish this 600 pager.

[Rasheed Abdullah · Rating 3 out of 5]

On February 4th, 1974 Patricia Campbell Hearst was kidnapped from her Berkeley apartment. Two months later, on April 15th, the teenager of the famed Hearst family was witnessed aiding her captors in a bank robbery. It would be a year and a half later before Patty Hearst resurfaced when she was arrested by the FBI. Shana Alexander wrote this story of that ordeal from the outside looking in.

This is the third book of Shana Alexander's I've read and it is not quite on par with the other two. She admitted her newness to the trial reporter scene and essentially to the true crime genre. At times this book read as though I was on an open highway on cruise control and at other times it read as though I was stuck in traffic during commute hour: stop and go--I'd read a bit, take a nap, read a bit, get a snack, read a bit, get distracted by something else. The book was 70% modified trial transcript, 20% assessment and analysis, 8% autobiography/diary and 2% philosophy.

The principal problems were two: Shana Alexander's recentness to trial reporting and the fact she didn't have rights to "Patty Hearst". Given that to work with Shana became our eyes and ears of the trial with a few extra tidbits gleaned from interviewing various parties she could access during and after the trial.

The positives of reading a true crime book that details the trial is that you can be a juror yourself and determine guilt or innocence based upon the facts of the trial. The drawback of such a book is the dryness of it and the absence of crucial biographical information. The better true crime books are those in which all involved persons have been extensively interviewed so that the writer can create the atmosphere, detail relationships and personalities so that the reader has a more complete picture of not just the crime--but what ushered in the crime, what was its full impact and then the results. This book doesn't quite read like that but in certainly offers a lot of historic value in giving us something about the case surrounding Patty Hearst.

[Gary Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I truly was taken in by this book. Fantastic. I gave many of these books away as presents.