Strange Piece of Paradise, by Terri Jentz

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this book to anyone; I think it appeals to a certain type of person. It was a Sunday morning in June I’d forgotten to turn off my alarm so at 6am it went off and I awoke to Sunday Morning Acoustic on KINK fm. They were interviewing Terri Jentz who was visiting Portland Oregon and would be doing a book signing at Powells Book Store in downtown. She told a little about her book and the tragedy that had taken place the summer of 1977 in Cline Falls, Oregon. I jumped out of bed and found the book at my local library and placed a hold on it through the Internet. Over the course of a month I read the pages, a store of a young cyclist embarking on a journey across the USA by bike, her attack just 7 days into the trip, her recover and her return to the American West.
I visited the Cline Falls State Park where she was attack back on June 22, 1977. It was exactly as she described. I looked at every detail and wondered how she managed to come back to this place. How she stood in the exact place where her life had almost been taken 30 years ago. I was only 5-years-old when Terri was run over by a truck in her tent in the middle of the night, when a man back his truck up and then attacked her with an ax. Terri was a strong smart adventurous young woman with a dream to cross the United States on her bicycle and be back at Yale in time for fall classes. It was a very surreal experience for me to be there. Maybe because I am a cyclist, maybe because I frequent that part of Oregon each year, maybe for a reason I am not suppose to know yet – this story speaks to me.