Compulsively readable.” —People (3 ½ stars) The Washington Post Kirkus Booklist TheDailyBeast.com Minneapolis Star Tribune Susan Cheever Carolyn See, author of Making a Literary Life Elsa Walsh, staff writer for The New Yorker and author of Divided Lives Crazy Love is a deeply affecting account of cruelty and abuse in a marriage doomed from the start. It is a reminder that while bad behavior can be explained it can never be excused, and that while placing blame is rarely useful, letting go is. Leslie Morgan Steiner's candor is wrenching and ultimately inspiring.” —Jane Juska, author of Unaccompanied Women and A Round-Heeled Woman Veronica Chambers, author, Mama's Girl George Lardner, author of The Stalking of Kristin and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his Washington Post series investigating his daughter's murder by her ex-boyfriend Iris Krasnow, author of New York Times bestseller, Surrendering to Marriage Sandy Hingston, "Loco Parentis" columnist for Philadelphia Magazine and author of The Affair Jane Bernstein, author of Bereft:A Sister's Story and Rachel in the World Elisabeth Joy LaMotte, psychotherapist and author of Overcoming Your Parents' Divorce Monica Holloway, author of Driving With Dead People and Cowboy and Wills Crazy Love recounts the sad, sentimental journey that destroys the myth of physical abuse - that it doesn't happen to nice girls, or smart girls, or anyone you know. Steiner's vivid prose paints a clear picture of how it started, why she let it continue, and how she escaped to tell the tale. Crazy Love sets the record straight: love can be a four letter word.” —Leslie Lehr, author of Wife Goes On Crazy Love is a gripping, beautifully crafted and above all a painfully honest account of a woman (who by all accounts doesn't look the type) grappling with an abusive relationship. If you've ever been there or heard about a woman dealing with this situation and wondered, "why'd she stay?" read Leslie's unselfconscious account. Now I understand. Read Crazy Love and you will too.” —Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, author of Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay Dee Dee Myers, author of Why Women Should Rule the World
author of Driving With Dead People and Cowboy and Monica Holloway
psychotherapist and author of Overcoming Your Pare Elisabeth Joy LaMotte
author of Bereft:A Sister's Story and Rachel Jane Bernstein
"Loco Parentis" columnist for Philadelphia Magazin Sandy Hingston
author of The Stalking of Kristin and winner of th George Lardner
Crazy Love is a deeply affecting account of cruelty and abuse in a marriage doomed from the start. It is a reminder that while bad behavior can be explained it can never be excused, and that while placing blame is rarely useful, letting go is. Leslie Morgan Steiner's candor is wrenching and ultimately inspiring.
author of Unaccompanied Women and A Round-Heeled W Jane Juska
staff writer for The New Yorker and author of Divi Elsa Walsh
For thousands of radiant brides, dreams of permanent honeymoon bliss dissolve rapidly into nightmares of abuse. Leslie Morgan Steiner, the author of Mommy Wars, returns with an affecting memoir that reenacts her own steady descent into a marital hell of physical and emotional abuse. Crazy Love relates how Steiner struggled with the realization that the husband she truly loved was destroying her life. This cautionary tale holds special power because it forever dispels the myth the nice girls from good families don't wind up in growing quagmires of domestic muck.
Steiner, a fresh Harvard graduate and new hire at Seventeen magazine, met a handsome young Wall Street trader riding the subway home. Nearly a year later-five days before her wedding-he reveals his penchant for battery when he slaps her for swearing at her computer. After two years of enduring his beatings and humiliations, she finally realizes that though she loves him, she can't help him overcome his violent childhood. The internal process of divorcing him and moving on takes much longer. Steiner's is an eye-opening, moving journey, told with candor, self-forgiveness, and grace. For abuse survivors everywhere.
Washington Post columnist Steiner (editor: Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families, 2006) shares the painful story of her abusive marriage. With a degree from Harvard, a job at Seventeen and an apartment in Manhattan, 22-year-old Steiner was ready to start her life anew after overcoming her substance-abuse problems from her teen years. When she met handsome, charming Conor, a 31-year-old investment banker, she fell hard. On a trip home to an affluent Washington, D.C., suburb to meet her divorcing parents, Conor picked a fight, furious that Steiner grew up in such a "perfect" place while he was beaten by his stepfather in working-class Boston. Although she was wary of his temper, Steiner was too in love and too sympathetic about Conor's past to be anything but relieved when they made up days later. When he half-choked her during sex and whispered "I own you," she was frightened but chalked it up to kinkiness. Days before their wedding, Conor slapped her when she swore at their malfunctioning laptop, but Steiner's fear and doubts were silenced by the avalanche of seemingly irreversible wedding preparations. In steady, intimate prose punctuated by surprising, refreshing streaks of humor, the author describes how the violence escalated, including an incident in which Conor pressed a gun to her temple. Especially enlightening is Steiner's discussion with a professor whose focus is abusive men. After a summer apart for business-school internships, Conor kept his promise not to hit her again-until one violent night when he smashed a picture frame over her head, kicked her in the ribs and strangled her until she lost consciousness. Steinerfinally left, even though "leaving meant abandoning . . . the best part of me, that part that was not afraid to love unconditionally."This courageous, empowering survival story brings the phrase "battered woman" into terrifying focus. Agent: Alice Martell/Alice Martell Agency
