Book Review: Finding Me, A Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed

“The day I disappeared in 2002, not many people even seemed to notice. I was twenty-one, a young mom who stopped at a Family Dollar Store one afternoon to ask for directions. For the next eleven years I was locked away in Hell. That’s the part of my story you may already know. There’s a whole lot more that you don’t.” I read this section of the preface of Finding Me and I was intrigued. I love a good biography, artists, celebrities, historic figures. I’ve read a few. I steered toward a more dark story with this autobiography about Michelle Knight, one of 3 kidnapping victims of Ariel Castro, a school bus driving in Cleveland, Ohio. Her life was far from a fairytale to begin with; poverty, abuse, homelessness and single parenthood. The majority of this book will shock with graphic descriptions of this young woman’s life and her struggle to keep hope alive during such unimaginable circumstances. But, as you continue on through her story, you realize the strength and courage that it took for her to build her life back up in order to live her life. She would not be broken…and now she is a beacon of hope for victims of abuse.