If I Am Missing or Dead

I was sent a copy of this book to review. The first thing I have to say is that it provides plenty of what every abuse victim needs: VALIDATION.

Victims tend to be brainwashed by their abusers and live locked into the closed system of logic presented by these abusers. They also become brainwashed by abusive family dynamics.

Ms. Latus tells her story honestly and clearly. Her father had no boundaries when it came to his sexual appetites. His children unfortunately, were raised to believe that this was acceptable. Like many abused children - it takes many years (if ever) before they realize this and by then they are often victimized by one abusive personality after another. In this case sex became confused with healthy love. In short, the family dynamic produces a perfect victim.

Latus herself married a man more interested in her body and their sex life than in her as a person. He preyed on her low self esteem for many years before they divorced. He even coerced her into 2 disfiguring breast enhancement surgeries - not even waiting until she was healed from her surgeries to have sex with her.

Her sister - of the title - was killed by her last abuser - whom she met online. Her sister also suffered from low-self esteem, looking the other way for every red flag. She turned to food for comfort and like many abuse victims - made a wall of fat between her and everyone else. Highly thought of at work - she could not find her way out of the dysfunction before someone smelled a victim and eventually killed her.

Latus' book weaves between her own abuse issues and her relationship with her late sister and family. As I said - it provides the validation so many abuse victims need. This book proves that things are not always as they look on the outside - and victims are NOT ALONE!

- Barbara
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AMAZON.COM Summary: 

At age 37, Janine Latus's younger sister, Amy, was strangled to death by her live-in boyfriend, bundled in a plastic tarp and buried beside a remote country road. It was a wretched end to a too-short life, one frequently marked by disappointment, sadness and struggle.

In the hands of a less gifted writer, Amy's story might stand only as an encomium or a cautionary tale: a glimpse into the life of one abused woman, representative of thousands like it. But Latus weaves a double strand. Part memoir, part biography, the book (which grew out of an article in O Magazine) explores Latus's own relationships with abusive men—and her eventual emancipation from a marriage riven by emotional and physical violence.

Latus has a spare, economical style, softened by an undercurrent of humor and marked by a total absence of self-pity. When on a ski vacation, a boyfriend brutally beats her, breaking several of her ribs and her nose—and then makes love to her, in a twisted form of penance—Latus doesn't wince in the retelling. She lets ambiguities and contradictions abide: she loved her husband, even as he humiliated and hurt her. Had things been slightly different, she seems to say, she—and not Amy—might have perished at the hands of her partner.

Unforgettable, unsentimental and profoundly affecting, Latus's book resonates long after the final page is turned.

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