The Laid Daughter: A True Story (Paperback)

by Helen Bonner (Author) "I am Helen..." (more)
Key Phrases: sneaky snake, passive woman, mother whipped, Peace Corps, Lakeview Hills, Los Angeles (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
Bonner is at her best when she retells her narrative with honesty and salient detail, such as this scene from her childhood: "The house smelled of furniture polish, and my father's shoes made white marks on the waxed floors. Mother always kept house like that, everything ironed, even the sheets, even our underwear." Now Bonner should know why she saved those puzzle pieces. Her instincts, despite her troubled life, were sound. It took all her accumulated skills as a woman, a lover, a mother, an academic and a writer to fit those pieces together so they make a clear, beautiful picture. Out of her pain has come something eloquent. -- The Pioneer, Bemidji, MN Sept 13 l995 Louise Mengelkoch

In the pages of Helen Bonner's compelling story, I glimpsed a child, a very bright child who survived devastating abuse. Creative and daring, the child speaks in dreams and journal entries. Because the author writes from an adult perspective, the child remains in the shadows, around the corner, between the lines. But she no longer searches a dark house. For Helen Bonner has lifted years of confusion surrounding the humiliating sexual abuse and terrifying physical abuse she suffered at the hands of her father and mother. She tells about recovering and healing traumatic childhood memories, yet hers is not simply a book about incest. Only a few paragraphs scattered throughout the book directly recount sexually abusive events. The Laid Daughter is an uncompromisingly honest story about overcoming, achieving, and growing. "Like a detective, I went through a cardboard box of tattered, handwritten journals, kept for years, looking for connections." A good book. -- The Healing Woman Oct. l996 by Aubrieta V. Hope

The courage it took for Helen Bonner, a college professor, to open up her life, using her journals and photo albums, is amazing. She tells her story and withholds nothing. Many survivors were conditioned at early ages to keep the secrets of their perpetrators, led to believe that we were conspirators in sexual activity. Telling our stories is not always safe. However, Bonner tells it all. The Laid daughter demonstrates feelings and beliefs that are very common among incest abuse survivors --- dissociations, flashbacks, nightmares, unlovable inadequate feelings. Suppression or repression of memories, even MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder). Bonner's work serves to "normalize" these symptoms. After reading the book, survivors may not feel so strange for experiencing them. The Laid Daughter is an excellent educational tool for professionals, graduate students, survivors and the general public. -- The Chorus May/June 1999 by Donita Lukich

This is an incest story ... with a different viewpoint. Helen saw herself as like the daughter of Leda in mythology, a woman taken by Zeus in the disguise of a swan. She asks herself if, like Helen of Troy, she sees her father as a God who has power over her. ... One of the story's appeals to me is that Helen is in her later years, like me, before she addresses the fact that her life is out of control. The intervening years are filled by broken marriages, numerous relationships with men and dysfunctional relationships with children. I particularly admire her honesty about even the sexual exploits of her life, which I believe are a problem for many of us survivors. Helen's descriptions of her progress toward wholeness ring bells of familiarity. This book would be very encouraging for younger men and women too. One chapter, American Auschwitz, describes her attendance at the l993 conference and its effect on her. ... VOICES is proud to have had Helen Bonner as one of its presenters at the Indianapolis Conference. -- VOICES newsletter, The Chorus, Oct. l996 Phyllis Froehle

Writers who publish confessional memoirs walk a fine line between embarrassing self-absorption and courageous honesty with a universal message. Throw in sex as the central issue, and the fine line almost disappears. Helen Bonner manages to walk that fine line. Her book is compelling, horrifying and, in the end, illuminating. Bonner says she wrote the book to counter the current notion that false memories are being rampantly implanted in millions of people by unscrupulous therapists. Her book does that and a lot more. Her decades of diligent journal entries provide solid evidence --- tortured dreams, everyday experiences and some fine short stories -- all written without conscious knowledge of the incest. As she sifts through her past, we root for the younger Bonner as she alternately struggles to learn the truth and shrinks from it.

-- The Pioneer, Bemidji, MN. Sept 13, l995 Louise Mengelkoch

Product Description
This is the true story of a woman writer and college professor who finally traces chronic difficulties in her love-life to early sexual abuse. With only journal entries, nightmares, and recovered memories to go on, she relentlessly pursues the truth of her past, no matter how painful it becomes. Despite encounters with those who disparage the value of recovered memories, depite her own tendency to dismiss what she finds too hard to face, she finds a trusted therapist, and goes through the healing process, freeing herself from the dreams, nightmares, and contortions of the unexamined past. As she pursues clues to her history, the life of a dynamic woman unfolds before us; a country girl from a troubled family, before todays equality laws, works her way step by step through a college education to become a successful professor and writer. Only when she goes back and faces the buried past, however, can she find the fulfilling personal life that she longs for. A f! ascinating life story as well as a testament to the value and truth of recovered memories at a time when the popular culture dismisses them.

In The Laid Daughter, we see for ourselves how early abuse of men or women is not simply forgotten, but can divide people against themselves, sometimes even creating the so-called split personality, multiple personality, or in psychological language, post traumatic stress disorder or dissociative disorder.

However, this book is not a downer. It is a psychological who-done-it, a page turner as we wonder whether Helen will find the missing pieces to the puzzle of her life and free herself to enjoy healthy relationships with men. (At one point, she finally gives in to a good marriage then runs away from it a few weeks later!) It is also fun to read the stories this gifted writer examines while she looks for clues to her past. Even the healthiest and most sceptical of us will identify with the challenges she faced in her time: In her twenties, finding the strength to leave an abusive marriage when she has 2 children, nowhere to go and no job training. In her thirties, finding time to go to college while working, being a model wife, and raising a family. In her 40's, serving in Africa in the Peace Corps, getting her first teaching job in Texas, facing administrators that give only lip service to Title IX laws, meeting Gloria Steinem, leading demonstrations against an all-m! ale faculty and adminstration. In her fifties, running a nationally recognized program to educate and place Native Americans in computer jobs, then finishing her Ph.D and landing her first job as a University Professor. All the while, writing her stories, keeping journals, and dealing with an exciting but always frustrating love life with a string of fascinating men: a newspaper editor who may or may not have killed his wife, a suave engineer for whom she is a trophy, a handsome young marine biologist, a mountaineer, a former cowboy. On a broader scale, she discloses the size of a national problem. In a chapter called American Auschwitz, she gives us the statistics, great numbers of people who have undergone early childhood abuse. She takes us with her to a VOICES conference, where she and hundreds of Survivors share their stories, banding together in healing workshops. In a chapter called Leda's Daughter, she goes further back, to trace the cultural acceptance of abuse reflected in war stories, like those from Viet Nam, in ancient legends such as Homer's Illiad, in poetry, such as Leda and the Swan, and in the literature of nearly every religion.

In the chapter Sneaky Snake meets the Bitch Queen, we get a glimpse of how successful therapy works. We meet the insightful Glenda, who carefully and respectfully guides Bonner through the dark caverns of her past. Glenda's respect for her client is possibly the element most responsible for the therapy's success. We also get to enjoy some fine short stories included as "clues" to her past. We follow the evolution of a writer, from her first stories published in True Confessions, to literary prizewinners like Roadside Trinity. It begins: "When Mary first came I was pumping gas, not usually girl's work but patriotic with a war on. In my photo album, the one I decorated with a wood-burning set, I look long and gawky in denims and tee shirt, pointy breats like dredged hills, first permanent exploding like the sun around a solemn face. I liked pumping gas, liked the smooth round handle in my palm, liked watching the gas surge into the glass, heavy red liquid flowing deeper with each long stroke of the handle." Then Mary drives up in her old ford truck and.... you'll have to read it for yourself.

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Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Kairos Center (September 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1884178235
• ISBN-13: 978-1884178238
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #533,288 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Story of Incredible Hope, October 3, 2002

By	Oceana - See all my reviews

When I began reading this book it was very hard to put down. Helen Bonner is an amazing woman, and I found the story of her life to be compelling. She shines for all of us who have survived sexual abuse. "The laid daughter" is an important personal testimonial. It serves as a record of what many girls face while growing up, what women face when seeking help for incest, and also marks our progress as a society that hopefully will become more and more aware to incest and the effects of trauma. Helen has shown great strength and courage. Her book is helping and will continue to help many survivors of incest.

In many ways my life path has been different from Helen's, but also it has been similar. I was also abused during a similar age frame that Helen was, and as survivors of incest we all share a similarity in our experience. I can see myself in her child eyes. I related with Helen's descriptions and experiences.

Thank you Helen Bonner for writing such an honest account of what we have all been taught to keep secret.

Reading "The laid daughter" also helped me tremendously to understand multiple personality disorder (MPD), since I do not have MPD.

36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bonner stilled my fear of reading this book., November 1, 1998

By A Customer

I was sort of afraid to read this book - was afraid the incest story would be too hard to look at head on. Before I started, I decided I would stop if I wanted to. I never stopped. Bonner's way with words always made me feel safe. I knew as I read that things would work out - that I would be left with hope instead of despair.

"Things working out" doesn't mean that the pain did not happen, but that Bonner found a way through it to a peaceful life. I am heartened by this book.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an undiscovered gem in social literature, March 31, 2005

By	Josephine Thompson "Torn From the Inside Out" (Oklahoma, U.S.A.) - See all my reviews

I have seen this title often but there are so many books about childhood incest, that I made the mistake of failing to look closer. The writing style of Helen Bonner is insightful, yet slightly detached as she tells of recovered memories surfacing as she taught literature as a college professor. Bonner veils her painful recollections within the stories of literature and her world as a professor, becoming angered at the mores of the past and present social structure that can allow a woman's worth to go unnoticed...then as the story unfolds like a mystery, Bonner addresses the real dragons in her life, the painful truth about her incestuous past and her recovery. The tone of the book is intellectual, mentally stimulating and emotionally engaging.
This is a profound book, for both victims and anyone who appreciates good literature.