num_pages: 752
description: In the summer of 1977, Terri Jentz and her Yale roommate took a cross-country bike trip. As they lay sleeping in the central Oregon desert, a man in a pickup truck deliberately ran over their tent and proceeded to attack them with an axe. The horrific crime was reported in newspapers across the country, but no one was ever arrested. Fifteen years later, Jentz returns to the small town where she was nearly murdered and makes an extraordinary discovery: the violence of that night is as present for the community as it is for her. Shockingly, many say they know who did it, and he is living freely in their midst.Powerful, eloquent, and paced like the most riveting of thrillers, Strange Piece of Paradise is a startling profile of a psychopath, a sweeping reflection on violence and the myth of American individualism, and a moving record of Jentz's brave inner journey from violence to hope.
language: English
title: Strange Piece of Paradise: A Return to the American West To Investigate My Attempted Murder - and Solve the Riddle of Myself
titlecomplete: Strange Piece of Paradise: A Return to the American West To Investigate My Attempted Murder - and Solve the Riddle of Myself
genres: Mystery, Horror, Biography Memoir, Biography, Audiobook, Memoir, Crime, Nonfiction, True Crime, Womens
ratings_count: 1960
awards: awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Edgar Award
category: Best Fact Crime, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: National Book Critics Circle Award
category: Autobiography
publisher: Picador