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Material Type | Library | Call Number | Suggested Age | Status |
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| Book | Searching... Putnam Main Public Library | 616.85236 S | Adult | Searching... Unknown |
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Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In 1977 Ruth Finley, 47 years old, married, a mother and living in Witchita, Kans., began to receive disturbing letters. The letters gave way to harassment, which in turn culminated in her kidnapping and stabbing by the elusive criminal dubbed the ``Poet.'' After four frustrating years the case was solved when a new police chief deduced that only Ruth herself could be the Poet. This deeply moving account re-creates not only the supposed crime but also the successful psychotherapy which followed. For five years, Ruth was treated by a psychiatrist named Andrew Pickens, gradually revealing that she had been a victim of childhood sexual abuse and that, while not suffering from multiple personality disorder, she still had the abused little girl in her psyche and that girl, resentful that no one had come to the adult Ruth's aid when her husband was stricken ill, became the Poet. Freelance writer Stone tells Ruth's engrossing, bizarre story with great sensitivity. Photos. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
The painful story of a Wichita, Kansas, woman who learns through psychotherapy that the homicidal maniac stalking her resides in her subconscious self, a product of repressed, long- buried memories of sexual child abuse. With her full cooperation, journalist Stone recounts Ruth Finley's life from the day in 1977 when she received the first nasty phone call to June 1988, when she attended her last therapy session. Finley's husband, Ed, had gone into the hospital at about the time a Kansas serial killer resurfaced. According to her analyst, Dr. Andrew Pickens, those events jarred Finley's subconscious into creating ``the Poet,'' a vicious man who harassed her for the next several years by letter and phone, who threw eggs at her house and left all manner of things on her porch--rocks, feces, a red bandanna, a Molotov cocktail. He cut her phone lines and accosted her on the street and at the mall. Then, in November 1978, Finley reported that she was abducted by two men who took her paycheck and other items. She got away, but on another occasion, the Poet attacked her in a mall parking lot, stabbing her repeatedly. She managed to escape and drove home with the knife still stuck in her side and one of the assailant's gloves hanging from a window. All very real to Ruth Finley, but police chief Richard LaMunyon doubted her stories; his department had kept her and ``the Poet'' under surveillance for years, without result. (LaMunyon still contends that Finley was fully cognizant of her actions and therefore criminally liable.) Finley began intensive therapy with Dr. Pickens, who suspected that she suffered from a ``dissociative disorder,'' divorcing her conscious self from painful experience. Through therapy, Finley allowed ``negative memories of her childhood to slip out.'' Referring to herself as that ``little girl,'' she brings forth recollections of brutal sexual assaults by an unnamed neighbor when she was three years old. Stone's evenhanded, serious treatment of this material keeps it from being unbearable or cheaply sensational. (8 pages b&w photos--not seen)
Booklist Review
From 1977 until 1981, Wichita, Kansas, resident Ruth Finley, in her late 40s at the time, was seemingly stalked by a man who threatened her in telephone calls and letters, damaged her home, and stabbed her during an encounter in a parking lot. The media dubbed the mysterious stalker Poet because of his propensity to communicate in verse. Finally, after years of surveillance, police detectives discovered the truth. Poet existed only in the mind of mild-mannered, passive Finley. She not only composed and sent the poetry to herself but faked the stabbings, kidnappings, and home destruction. Stone fascinatingly reconstructs this unusual case, following Finley through five years of psychotherapy that unearthed childhood sexual abuse as the root of Finley's delusions. An empathetic portrait of a severely traumatized woman who, coming to terms with her abusive childhood, finally proved able to put her life back on a steady course. ~--Sue-Ellen Beauregard
Library Journal Review
Ruth Finley of Wichita, Kansas led a normal, quiet life with her husband, family, and friends until 1977, when she became the victim of a stalker whom the police named ``the Poet.'' He harassed Ruth through the mail and on the phone, and he even kidnapped and stabbed her. The case remained open and unsolved until 1981, when the chief of police proved that the Poet was Ruth herself. Ruth, however, had no idea of what she was doing, and the last chapters of this account deal with her seven years of psychotherapy. With the help of a doctor, Ruth retrieved memories of severe abuse, both sexual and psychological, at the hands of a neighbor. The Poet had roots in her childhood trauma. This is an unusual and compelling story written in a style that pulls the reader in. Both readers of true crime and psychological accounts will enjoy this book. Highly recommended.-- Lisa J. Cochenet, Plainfield P.L. Dist., Ill. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
