''Strange Piece of Paradise: A Return to the American West to Investigate My Attempted Murder—And Solve the Mystery of Myself'' is a 2006 non-fiction book () by the American writer
Terri Jentz
The Cline Falls axe attack refers to an Cold case, unsolved attempted homicide that occurred on the evening of June 22, 1977, at the Cline Falls State Scenic Viewpoint, Cline Falls State Park in Deschutes County, Oregon United States. The victims ...
.
Synopsis
Terri Jentz
The Cline Falls axe attack refers to an Cold case, unsolved attempted homicide that occurred on the evening of June 22, 1977, at the Cline Falls State Scenic Viewpoint, Cline Falls State Park in Deschutes County, Oregon United States. The victims ...
and her friend Shayna Weiss (a pseudonym) are Yale students
bicycling across America in 1977. On June 22, 1977, after stopping to camp at
Cline Falls State Park in Oregon, they are brutally attacked when a man runs over the tent in which they are sleeping with a high-clearance pick-up truck and assaults them with an ax. Despite their injuries, both survive. Weiss suffers partial blindness and memory loss, and distances herself from the author. Jentz, her body scarred, bears her injuries mostly in guilt, anger, and fear.
To help confront these feelings, Jentz returns to the area fifteen years later to investigate the crime even though the
statute of limitations on attempted murder prevents her attacker's prosecution. During her investigation, she meets other victims of violent crimes and their advocates, who help her follow the most promising lead: a man whom locals have always suspected is the perpetrator.
She learns that he, too, obsesses about the incident, frequently talking about the crime, and she even observes his polygraph session, in which he is asked about the attack on Jentz and Weiss, and attends his trial (which results in his conviction and sentencing for charges related to a different crime). However, she never speaks with him.
For Jentz, the value of this exercise has been to break out of "the claustrophobic confines of
ermemories."
Television interviews
*Jentz told part of her story in an interview for
C-SPAN2
Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN ) is an American cable and satellite television network that was created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a nonprofit public service. It televises many proceedings of the United States ...
BookTV on 23 March 2007. The caption for the C-SPAN video indicates that Jentz is an activist for
Equality Now.{{citation needed, date=February 2013
*Jentz was interviewed in the ''20/20'' episode "Survivors", that first aired 26 August 2009 on
WE tv
We TV (stylized as WE tv) is an American pay television channel. Owned by AMC Networks since its September 1997 launch, it is oriented mainly towards lifestyle and entertainment programming.
As of February 2015, approximately 85.2 million Ameri ...
.
*Her story featured in ''Language of Anger, Forgiveness: A Time to Love and a Time to Hate'', a
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...
Video which premiered on 17 April 2011.
Book reviews
''Strange Piece of Paradise - The New York Times'' Book Review
See also
*
Bikecentennial
Bikecentennial '76 was an event consisting of a series of bicycle tours on the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail across the United States in the summer of 1976 in commemoration of the bicentennial of America's Declaration of Independence. The route cr ...
, Jentz and Weiss were following the Oregon Trail
*
Libertarian
Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's e ...
, the philosophy Jentz said characterized many people she met in Oregon, and (she surmised) contributed to her case's and other violent crimes against women's not being solved
Awards and honors
American non-fiction books
Edgar Allan Poe Award: Nominee