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Abridged
Strange Piece of Paradise - Abridged by Terri Jentz
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Strange Piece of Paradise - Abridged

A Return to the American West To Investigate My Attempted Murder - and Solve the Riddle of Myself

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Narrator Margaret Colin
Length 8 hours 46 minutes
Language English
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In the summer of 1977, Terri Jentz and her Yale roommate, Shayna Weiss, make a cross-country bike trip. They pitch a tent in the desert of central Oregon. As they are sleeping, a man in a pickup truck deliberately runs over the tent. He then attacks them with an ax. The horrific crime is reported in newspapers across the country. No one is ever arrested. Both women survive, but Shayna suffers from amnesia, while Terri is left alone with memories of the attack. Their friendship is shattered.

Fifteen years later, Terri returns to the small town where she was nearly murdered, on the first of many visits she will make "to solve the crime that would solve me." And she makes an extraordinary discovery: the violence of that night is as present for the community as it is for her. Slowly, her extensive interviews with the townspeople yield a terrifying revelation: many say they know who did it, and he is living freely in their midst. Terri then sets out to discover the truth about the crime and its aftermath, and to come to terms with the wounds that broke her life into a before and an after. Ultimately she finds herself face-to-face with the alleged axman.

Powerful, eloquent, and paced like the most riveting of thrillers, Strange Piece of Paradise is the electrifying account of Terri's investigation into the mystery of her near murder. A startling profile of a psychopath, a sweeping reflection on violence and the myth of American individualism, and a moving record of a brave inner journey from violence to hope, this searing, unforgettable work is certain to be one of the most talked about books of the year.

Terri Jentz is a screenwriter and lives in Los Angeles. Strange Piece of Paradise is her first book.

An actress of stage and screen, Margaret Colin has starred in the Aristocrats off-Broadway, for which she won a Theater World award, and received a Saturn Award for her role on the television show Now and Again.  Her other television credits include appearances on The Edge of Night, As the World Turns, Foley Square, and Leg Work.  Margaret has played the role of Eleanor Waldorf, mother of Blair Waldorf, on the hit television series Gossip Girl.  She's appeared in the films The Devils Own, Independence Day, Pretty in Pink, Three Men and a Baby, and Unfaithful.  She also played Jacqueline Kennedy in the play Jackie: An American Life.

Margaret read Strange Piece of Paradise: A Return to the American West to Investigate My Attempted Murder--and to Solve the the Riddle of Myself by Terri Jentz, published by Macmillan Audio. Of her reading, AudioFile magazine stated, "Margaret Colin's reading is generally vivid and emotive though she wisely relates horrors in a still voice more powerful than any histrionics."

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