Book Review │Have you Seen These Children? by Veronica Slaughter

As this pandemic feels like it will never end in New Jersey, I am struggling to balance virtual teaching, a newborn, a toddler, selling our house and buying our new one all while trying to keep myself writing. It is a crazy time in the Hart Home for sure. Sleep is a short lived commodity, so it was a very big deal for me to give up a night of it to finish Veronica Slaughter’s Have You Seen these Children?.

Her memoir tells the story of how her American father kidnapped her and her siblings from their mother in the Philippines, bringing them to the USA where they moved constantly from state to state to avoid being found. They lived a life full of fear and abuse as the hands of their father. As a mother, I was immediately drawn to the story because I wanted to make sure that these children eventually got home to their mother and away from their abusive father. I was taken down a late-night roller coaster of emotions that left me sobbing in parts reading what Veronica, Valerie,Vance and Vincent endured and lived through at the hands of their manipulative father.

As a mother, this memoir encapsulated my worst fears: having my children kidnapped and having no way of protecting or rescuing them. They were taken from their mother at such pivotal ages that even after being reunified, their experiences at the hands of their pathological father shaped their adult lives and their future trials. Veronica was 8-years old at the time she was taken, and while not the eldest still had the maturity to know the importance of keeping them all together as well as raising and protecting her younger brother. In many ways, it is her wherewithal that keeps the children together and makes this tragedy one that could have had a much worse ending.

Overall, Have You Seen These Children? is a bitter-sweet memoir that will keep you glued to its pages until you have finished it. It will make you laugh and cry as well as play on some of your worst fears. At its heart, it is a tale of love and the trials that we face in ensuring that love remains even if we don’t all get a Hollywood ending. Even in all of the hate and tragedy, the message is still clear: love and sibling bonds can and will survive even when evil wants to destroy them.

Book Information

Have You Seen These Children?: A Memoir by Veronica Slaughter was released on August 18, 2020 from She Writes Press with ISBN 1631527258. This review corresponds to an advanced paper galley that was supplied by the publisher in exchange for this review.

Dr. Katherine Kuzma-Beck HartLeave a comment

Book Review│Ted Bundy’s Murderous Mysteries: The Many Victims Of America’s Most Infamous Serial Killer by Kevin Sullivan

bundyI am a true crime junky and when it comes to Ted Bundy, I can read anything about him. I find it crazy how so many women found him to be so trustworthy and charming because when I watch footage of him or even see pictures, I just think how demented he looks. I would have promptly walked in the opposite direction of him had I ever encountered him in life.

That said, Kevin Sullivan has written three other books on Bundy making this volume, the fourth in his series. Sullivan’s Bundy novels include The Bundy Murders, The Trail of Ted Bundy and The Bundy Secrets. What makes Ted Bundy’s Murderous Mysteries: The Many Victims Of America’s Most Infamous Serial Killer different from the first three books in this series is that Sullivan shares with the world case files and notes that have not previously been released, creating new information even for the most dedicated of Bundy’s researchers.

Detailed Case Notes

Sullivan does not disappoint with his inclusion of copies of copious amounts of case files from investigators that detail Bundy’s relationships, abductions and murders. As they are true files from the case, they are detailed and often bloody, but they give you an honest documentation of the horrors that Ted Bundy inflicted on countless women while he was alive and free.

Along with the case files, Sullivan wonderfull strings together the events and timelines, guiding the reader in putting together the new information presented as well as synthesizing it with previous information from earlier works. That said, this novel is not a light read and I found myself needing to take breaks often just because of how heavy and gruesome much of the material was. What made it even more difficult to stomach was how Sullivan showed you the cases through the victims. He makes you feel as though you are watching the last parts of each woman’s life as they encountered Ted Bundy and met their often gruesome demise.

Sullivan curates the case files and his own commentary with the ease of someone who knows their course material well. This book stands as a way to preserve what is known about Ted Bundy and his victims which as Sullivan himself admits, is important because so much of the material that we once had has already been lost because Utah had no interest in preserving it and what they did have was destroyed once the trail documents hit their nine-year limit. Overall, Sullivan’s completion of his Ted Bundy series does not disappoint and offers much detailed information into Ted Bundy and his many victims.

Book Information

Ted Bundy’s Murderous Mysteries: The Many Victims Of America’s Most Infamous Serial Killer by Kevin Sullivan was released by WildBlue Press on April 19,2019, with ISBN 9781948239141. This review corresponds to an electronic galley that was received from the publisher in exchange for this review.

Dr. Katherine Kuzma-Beck HartLeave a comment

Into the Wild & The Wild Truth

I found Into the Wild when I was going through the last breakup I would have before I would meet my future husband. The end of the that relationship was awful, but it also made me view a lot of what my dating life had been like up until that point. I loved toxic relationships, I loved the drama, I loved choosing emotionally unavailable men. It was a dark time in my life when it came to building healthy relationships.

I have no doubt that stems from earlier events in my life and perhaps one day, I’ll finally write about those. Sometimes, when I think back, I can almost pinpoint the moment that the toxicity seeped into me from my limited world around me. I just never really knew what a strong hold it took or how long it would take to get away from the causes and get it out of me.

I identified so strongly with:

“Some people feel like they don’t deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

It really spoke to me and at times, when I am reflecting back on those parts of my life, I still feel like that was lesson I took away from that time and unconsciously carried with me for many years. I completely understood why a young man from a “good” family would pack a bag and disappear into the wilderness. It had nothing to do with young adulthood rebellion, but in so many ways a need for a rebirth from what he was born into. It just made sense to me and for awhile, I seriously considered putting all of my efforts into becoming an Alaskan Bush teacher.

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The Wild Truth, by Carine McCandless

In 2014, Chris’s sister, Carine published The Wild Truth which delves deeply into her family’s dysfunction, the lies and toxicity and really shows exactly why  Chris died in an abandoned bus in the Bush.

I immediately had bought it and read a chunk before I had to stop to focus on my master’s thesis. I finally got to finish it today and quite simply put: wow. I can’t remember the last time that I had tears streaming down my face as I finished a book. If you thought you identified with Chris, you need to read Carine’s side of things. I felt so many things and I just understood so much of what she went through and how as an adult, it largely became her, navigating her own life and making her own rules.

I highly recommend this memoir. In fact, I think I’m going to go home to day and re-watch the film adaptation of Into the Wild for the umpteenth time.

Dr. Katherine Kuzma-Beck Hart1 Comment