Where I Stopped

by Martha Ramsey

A compassionate rendering of Martha the young girl, as she lives through rape and its repercussions in her life, and of Martha the adult, as she turns to face the meaning of her memories, Ramsey's book conveys the peculiar way in which the psyche resists knowing what it has suffered from sexual abuse, and what it is like to arrive haltingly at a truthful connection with one's own history.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction

325 pages, Hardcover

First published January 3, 1996

Reviews

[Paul Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like one of those great suspense movies where I know all along who did it, this book about a girl (and later a woman) attempting to understand what happened to herself and her family after she was raped at the age of thirteen kept me on the edge of my seat from beginning to end. The question isn't ultimately who did it or why, but the long-term effect of the violent act. I kept asking myself, will Martha Ramsey actually come out of this okay? Even twenty years after it happened, she still had awful problems coping, but she worked steadily to figure it all out. She reread the trial transcripts, she interviewed the judge and witnesses and her own family members in her quest to understand the long-lasting impact of her ordeal.

This is a terrific book and it shows that one incident, an assault that took less than twenty minutes total time, had a lifetime effect. It's very well written and her search is honest and deep, as are the problems she tried to deal with.

I highly recommend this to adult readers!

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the young age of thirteen, Martha became a victim of rape. She handled the rape in a manner consistent with what she imagined an older woman would do. Martha felt that in being thirteen, she was a young woman flirting with sexuality. She did not realize that the way in which she saw herself, was not particularly the way in which others saw her. As years, passed, she went through numerous sexual liasons, looking for her raper?, looking to be unraped? Trying to find a way through the silence that befalls most rape victims when friends and family are uncomfortable having serious dicussions about the situation. Martha walks us through her life as she searches for normality, interviews jury members, the judge, read transcripts, trying to find that thirteen year old girl. As a reader. it was a hard journey for me to follow. I can only imagine what she has been through. And with this book, I actually have a complete picture.