"Bibliotherapy and Domestic Violence"

Bibliotherapy is a psychological technique that uses directed readings to help individuals solve personal problems. The reader gains insight by reading a fictional account about a person who has similar problem. In recognition at October is “Domestic Violence Awareness Month”, the following books are recommended to readers who are in, or have been in, an abusive relationship.

“Grace Notes”, the 36th novel by popular writer, Charlotte Vale Allen, is a semi-autobiographical story about a novelist—Grace Loring-- who, as a battered wife, takes her infant daughter and flees to another state. In a new setting, Grace pursues her writing and also lectures on spousal abuse. Her work brings her fans, particularly women in need of help.

An e-mail from an abused woman reminds Grace of her past life. She responds to the e-mail and begins an electronic correspondence with a young abused wife from Virginia. Within a few months, bloodshed ends the contact and Grace’s e-mails are subpoenaed as evidence in a murder trial.

“Alone” by Lisa Gardner is a mystery involving a Boston police sniper, Bobby Dodge, who responds to a domestic violence scene and kills the man in order to save the wife and a child. Later, the sniper begins to doubt the incident as he wonders if the wife hadn’t engineered his involvement in the killing. Was she the most helpless or the most dangerous partner in this crime of domestic violence? The author keeps the tension high with the resolution on the mystery coming with the postlude. (The Library also holds a copy of this story on audio tape--#0894)

“Black and Blue” by Anna Quindlen ushers the reader into shadowed life of a woman with a crushed psyche and a bruised self-image. As a nineteen-year-old nursing student, she meets her future husband in a Brooklyn bar. The marriage materializes into a prison sentence of abuse and destruction. Fearing for her son and realizing that the next attack could be the last, the young mother escapes from her husband. She finds salvation with a relocation agency for abused women. With only a few hundred dollars and help from a variety of volunteers, she begins a new life in a different part of the country. The “Oprah Book Club” book of 1998 takes the reader into a dysfunctional relationship where abuse and loneliness is a way of life.

Newer non-fiction books held by the library on abusive relationships include “A Brother’s Journey: Surviving a Childhood of Abuse” by Richard B. Pelzer, “Last Dance, Last Chance and Other True Cases” by Anne Rule, “Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men” by Lundy Bancroft, and “The Verbally Abusive Relationship” by Patricia M. Evans.

Readers are reminded that through donations—large and small--the Library Foundation purchases many of the new books and other materials added to the Library’s collection. Should a benefactor wish to contribute a portion of his estate to the Foundation, a local attorney can help make that wish possible.