New York Review of Books Review

THE AUTHOR HAD A chipped tooth. It ruined her looks, she thought. She had to interview someone for her book, and she really wanted to cancel. The interview subject was Mariatu Kamara, the young woman from Sierra Leone who wrote " The Bite of the Mango," a memoir about surviving a civil war, rape, losing the baby that resulted from the rape, having her hands chopped off, making it to safety and finally leaving everyone she knew to seek refuge in Canada. The author thought about this, about why she was considering canceling and who she was about to talk to - and "shut up very quickly about my poor tooth." But here's the thing: The author in question is Elizabeth Smart, the Utah woman who was kidnapped at knife point at age 14 and forced to become the "wife" of a deranged religious zealot. For nine months, she was starved, beaten and raped by this man, until she was saved by the police. The mind pingpongs wildly as Smart offhandedly tells this story of the chipped tooth and the interview in where THERE'S HOPE: Healing, Moving Forward, and Never Giving Up (St. Martin's, $26.99), one of several recent books on coping with trauma and its aftermath. Smart notes that there's no hierarchy in the world of adversity. She's right. And yet I couldn't help thinking that if anyone would have been entitled to reschedule an interview with the survivor of a civil war in Sierra Leone - for any reason she wanted, including a faulty smile - that person would be Elizabeth Smart. Smart's first book, "My Story," was about her ordeal. Now she's writing about the ordeals of others - people like Breann Lasley, attacked by a stranger who climbed in her bedroom window; Norma Bastidas, who endured years of sex trafficking; and Alec Unsecker, a teenager who has spent much of his life fighting cancer. While the weaving of Smart's own story with those of other victims is often awkward, it's always absorbing, and along the way she provides valuable lessons about resilience, faith and the inherent power of not wanting to be pitied, even if you're the very definition of a victim. Time and again, Smart demonstrates a simple truth that she and those she's writing about have learned: "Whatever they go through does not define who they are." And she provides practical advice about what to say, and not say, to people who have been deeply traumatized. "There is one word in particular that I and probably most survivors of anything find especially intolerable: Why. ... Most people don't think they're asking anything rude or being insensitive, but these questions are damaging, because when you ask 'Why didn't you... ' the victim hears 'You should have ...,' which translates to 'It's your own fault that this terrible thing happened to you.' " It's really quite shocking what people do ask, and I say that as a deeply nosy person. But I can say with certainty that it would never have occurred to me to ask - as one man did on a first date with Smart - if, during all the times she was raped, she had ever enjoyed it. JOURNEY THROUGH TRAUMA: A Trail Guide to the 5-Phase Cycle of Healing Repeated Trauma (Avery, $27), by Gretchen Schmelzer, is written for the trauma victim. Schmelzer isn't a storyteller, and she isn't interested in sharing case histories; she describes what happened in her own childhood using only the broadest strokes. So a page turner "Journey Through Trauma" is not. But this Harvardtrained psychologist has some shrewd observations, including the reminder that "repeated trauma is about both what did happen and what didn't happen" (in other words, "the normal developmental growth that would have taken place during the years that the trauma was occurring"). Life stories have coherence, Schmelzer writes, and trauma shatters that coherence. Healing means finding the thread, the narrative, of your life again. Schmelzer's plan for healing is organized into five phases: Preparation (which usually involves coping with the behavior, like drug or alcohol abuse, that can result from trauma, a process that may take years); Unintegration ("a controlled coming apart"); Identification (categorizing and examining the various aspects of the trauma that you may have avoided); Integration (reassembling the pieces of your story); and, finally, Consolidation (the creation of a whole intact you). Schmelzer gets a little lost in her metaphors (Wait, is "practice falling" literally about rock climbing or are we talking about therapy? Both? Oh, O.K.). But those who have had repeated trauma in their lives may find this book a useful adjunct to therapy. The subject of Katherine Ketcham's the only life i could save (Sounds True, $21.95) isn't explicitly trauma, but at the heart of all trauma is helplessness - and I can think of few things more traumatic than watching the personality of the child you love vanish in the face of drug addiction. Ketcham had written several popular books about addiction (her son, Ben, was forced to read one of them in rehab), and she had led counseling groups for addicted teenagers. You might assume this expertise would have prepared her for her own son's battle. Quite the opposite. "I know how to talk and listen to other people's children," she confesses. "But I don't know how to listen or talk to my own child." Treating addiction involves a great deal of rinseand-repeat behavior; at heart, it's drudgery. But there's repeated, brutal battering at the heart of any story of a mother trying to save her child, particularly when you know that nothing you say or do will make a difference until he or she is ready. It's like watching a game of Frogger - only the frog that might be roadkill is your kid, and the cars are real. Ketcham's story has a predictable Lifetime Channel arc, sprinkled with statistics about addiction. But for the true science nerd who also craves a page turner there's Nadine Burke Harris's THE DEEPEST WELL: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27). Burke Harris, who founded the Center for Youth Wellness in one of the poorest, most crime-ridden areas of San Francisco, first came to national prominence with her TED Talk, "How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime." As a young pediatrician, she was treating a population of kids who suffered disproportionately from conditions like asthma, eczema and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). But then into her clinic walked a 7-year-old child who had stopped growing for no apparent reason - until it turned out that he'd been molested at the age of 4. Early childhood trauma releases buckets of stress hormones, Burke Harris explains, which in turn can lead to a lifetime of medical problems. While she didn't originate the idea of the ACE (adverse childhood experiences) score, she did put it into practice in her clinic: She realized that she could give out all the inhalers and Ritalin she wanted, but unless she addressed the underlying issues of trauma, the medications were just a bandage and a lifetime of other health issues were unavoidable. Burke Harris tells the stories of her patients carefully and sometimes humorously, and the studies she cites, showing how early exposure to stress hormones can plague a person for years, are both disturbing and fascinating. Consider, for example, a study of rat mothers that showed the entire trajectory of their pups' lives could be determined by the amount of licking and grooming they were given. Baby rats that received more of this care had less of the stress hormone corticosterone. Moreover, the next generation of rats emulated their own mothers' behavior: High-licking moms begat high-licking children. This not only tempted me to sidle up to my 16-year-old sons and lick them (warning: don't), it also made me marvel at the extraordinary effects of maternal attention at an age when we think children are way too young to notice. Maybe those 5,000 readings of "Goodnight Moon" to my 2month-olds weren't such a waste of time. Burke Harris, who was raised in California in a wellknown academic family from Jamaica, waits until the very end of the book to explain her personal connection to the subject of childhood trauma, though astute readers may have detected hints at the very beginning. This reveals not only why she needed to devote herself to childhood trauma but how she was able to adapt to the exigencies of medical school. It also shows how keenly she understands the importance of having support in a time of crisis. It made me wish I knew her. And also made me wish we could talk over coffee and cake. I mean, unless overeating could be traumatic. To which I say "no." JUDITH NEWMAN is the author, most recently, of "To Siri With Love: A Mother, Her Autistic Son and the Kindness of Machines."