Dancing with the Octopus
This title will be released on September 22nd. You may pre-order the book now.
One Omaha winter day in November 1978, when Debora Harding was just fourteen, she was abducted at knifepoint from a church parking lot. She was thrown into a van, assaulted, held for ransom, and then left to die as an ice storm descended over the city. Debora survived. She identified her attacker to the police and then returned to her teenage life in a dysfunctional home where she was expected to simply move on ... It wasn't until decades later--when beset by the symptoms of PTSD--that Debora undertook a radical project: she met her childhood attacker face-to-face in prison and began to reconsider and reimagine his complex story. This was a quest for the truth that would threaten the lie at the heart of her family and with it the sacred bond that once saved her.
Debora Harding has had varied professional experiences including work in national U.S. politics for ten years, co-founding the UK's first local terrestrial television station, and management of a bicycle business. Her work has been published in The Guardian, The Daily Mail, and elsewhere. The mother of two children, she spent her childhood in Nebraska and Iowa, and now lives in England with her British husband, the writer Thomas Harding.