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A Memoir
by Karen Palmer
A Love Story, A Horror Story, A Reckoning.
"Once upon a time, I disappeared." So begins Karen Palmer's harrowing and redemptive memoir, She's Under Here.
In 1989, shortly after her second marriage, Palmer and her new husband quit their jobs without notice. They pulled her two young daughters out of school and buckled them into the rear seat of a used car purchased with cash. The trunk was packed with clothing and toys, pillows and blankets, four place settings, one pot, one pan, and a sack that contained every penny they had. Living with the fear of Palmer's dangerous ex-husband had become untenable: This was DIY witness protection.
In this searingly honest and heart wrenching account, Palmer examines why she ended up trapped, how she escaped, and the ongoing perils of life constructed around a false identity. She ruthlessly explores the lines between desire and fear, victim and perpetrator, captivity and freedom, and exposes myriad aspects of what it means to make difficult choices as a woman, when none of the options are good. She's Under Here is a haunting meditation on themes of disappearance, betrayal, and private violence, and it is utterly unforgettable.
"To escape a violent man, Karen Palmer had to disappear— a leap into unimaginable uncertainty that she landed, incredibly, over and over again. And that's the through line of this book, which shocked me by never turning where I expected and never resting on old narratives of trauma and victimhood. Palmer is a precise and wise storyteller. She takes us with her across the danger. This feels less like a redemption tale and more like a tandem skydive, just as terrifying and just as exhilarating. I can't believe she pulled it off, but oh, the joy she wrought from this wild life." ―Lacy Crawford, author of Notes on a Silencing
"I read this book in one sitting, hypnotized by Karen Palmer's urgent, fascinating life story and dazzling style. She's Under Here is a genuine tour-de-force, blistering with intelligence and dark wit, as Palmer ruthlessly interrogates the ethics of her past and steers us through the depths. This is an important work of literary art." ―Erika Krouse, author of Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation
This information about She's Under Here was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Karen Palmer is a Pushcart Prize winner and has received grants from the NEA and Colorado Council on the Arts. She's Under Here grew out of her award-winning essay "The Reader Is the Protagonist," first published in Virginia Quarterly Review and selected by Leslie Jamison for inclusion in Best American Essays 2017. More recently her short story "Birds of Paradise" won the 2022 Emily Clark Balch Prize for Fiction. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, The Kenyon Review, Arts & Letters, and Kalliope, among others. She lives in Los Angeles.
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Children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today.
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