After the Flashlight Man: A Memoir of Awakening (Hardcover)

~ Nancy Mccabe (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

One night in 1990, a stranger cut the screen out of Nancy McCabe's bedroom window while she slept and shone a flashlight into her eyes as she woke. A few weeks later, her father came down with temporary amnesia. Although unrelated, these events became linked in her mind, sweeping out from under her the fundamentals many of us take for granted: safety, freedom, the stability of memory, and a general oblivion to mortality. After the Flashlight Man is the story of how one author came to terms with these experiences that threw her life into a whole new light: the self-defense classes, rape crisis volunteer work, writing, and meditation that served as checkpoints along her healing journey while she re­ examined events from her childhood and relationships with family and friends. Ultimately, a flashlight turned against her as a bizarre weapon became instead a metaphorical tool that blazed her path, the impetus to reclaim, recast, and tell her own stories, discovering her own power to reinvent her vision of her life.

About the Author

Nancy McCabe has had her creative nonfiction appear in Prairie Schooner, Fourth Genre, Massachusetts Review, and Puerio del Sol, among others. Her work has received a Pushcart Prize and has been cited twice by Best American Essays. She teaches writing at the University of Pittsburgh in Bradford, PA, where she lives with her daughter.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 135 pages
• Publisher: Purdue University Press (November 18, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557532583
• ISBN-13: 978-1557532589
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,510,613 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very interesting and beautifully written book, March 15, 2004

By A Customer

Nancy McCabe's essays are ample proof that the nonfiction memoir, when handled by the right author, is an art form rivalling fiction or poetry in power and even beauty. These essays are about violence and memory, how to experience a traumatic personal event and arrive at some kind of resolution. I first read McCabe's "Meeting Sophie" because I, too, am the mother of daughters adopted from China. When I loved that book, I ordered this one. Even though I haven't personally experienced rape or even near-rape (the Flashlight Man fortunately bungles his crime), I was so enamored of McCabe's writing that I read this book in a single night. Highly recommended.