LDS Book: Against My Will

One rainy morning. One selfish man. One evil act.

In just a few terrifying moments, Carina's life changed forever. It had been Carina's goal to keep herself pure for marriage. The man who raped her took away her virginity, her dignity, her security, her choices, her life. Carina wishes she had died that morning on the mountain, but fate cruelly let her live. She didn't know a person could feel so lost, so violated, or so worthless.

Day after day, she cowers in her boyfriend's home, unable to find the courage to even go back to her apartment. Only her best friend, Jennifer, and her boyfriend, Jove, reach through the thick curtain of emotions to try to bring her back out into the light. Yet in spite of their efforts, Carina is unsure that she will ever be able to live life again. How can she return to a normal life? How can she face a world of so much darkness?

Just when she begins to feel hope that perhaps life might go on, fate deals her the most cruel blow of all. Now, it is up to Carina to reach past her fears and find the strength to overcome her circumstances.

In Against My Will, author Robyn Heirtzler creates an intimate and emotional look into the life of a rape victim. Readers will follow Carina's journey as she deals with the emotional and physical effects of the rape, faces her attacker on the street and in court, and finds the courage and the will to fight back the overwhelming tide of despair and feel peace and happiness again in her world.

A must-read for family and friends of rape victims, Against My Will is a book that will help the reader to better understand the pain and frustration - the devastating torment - the victims endure, enabling the reader to better reach out and help rape victims heal.

For more information on helping rape victims, please visit Robyn's website, www.robynheirtzler.com.

This is an important work. Non-fiction is about facts; fiction about truth. This work will open eyes and change attitudes about rape. It will make a difference in many lives.

—Lee Nelson

Reviews-

“One rainy morning. One selfish man. One evil act. In just a few terrifying moments, Carina’s life changed forever.”

“A must-read for family and friends of rape victims” (quotes from the back cover)

Against My Will by Robyn Heirtzler is the fictional account of a college girl, Carina, who is forced into a stranger’s car while jogging, then taken up on a mountain and raped. She survives, makes her way back down the mountain and calls her boyfriend. An emotional wreck, Carina spends the next months holed up in her boyfriend’s apartment. Just when she starts taking the first tentative steps toward healing, Carina finds out she is pregnant. She knows that the rapist is the father, since this has been her one and only sexual encounter.

Although it reads like a novel, this book has a “how-to” feel, and perhaps could be subtitled: “a guide for understanding what a rape victim may experience.” Carina’s post-rape experience is related in a blow-by-blow manner: the hospital after the rape, the interactions with police and legal counsel, the rape trial, the prenatal care and deliberations about what to do with the baby.

Carina is not Mormon or especially religious, but by the end of the novel she and her boyfriend have become interested in listening to the LDS missionaries at some point in the future. Neither the missionaries nor their message get any airtime – Carina and her boyfriend are simply too emotionally occupied with the pregnancy and rape trial to pursue their interest.

This book is well-done; an eye-opening account of what recovering from sexual brutality would entail. The storyline flows well and holds interest. Heirtzler strikes an honest and straightforward tone, not sensationalistic, self-aware, or overly emotional. In a stroke of genius, Heirtzler balances the evil of the rapist with the goodness of Carina’s boyfriend, deftly imprinting a hopeful flavor on a book about a grim subject. I would highly recommend this book for family and friends of rape victims.

-Holy Jones