Visiting Hours: A Memoir of Friendship and Murder

by Amy Butcher

Overview

In this powerful and unforgettable memoir, award-winning writer Amy Butcher examines the shattering consequences of failing a friend when she felt he needed one most.

Four weeks before their college graduation, twenty-one-year-old Kevin Schaeffer walked Amy Butcher to her home in their college town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Hours after parting ways with Amy, he fatally stabbed his ex-girlfriend, Emily Silverstein. While he was awaiting trial, psychiatrists concluded that he had suffered an acute psychotic break. Although severely affected by Kevin’s crime, Amy remained devoted to him as a friend, believing that his actions were the direct result of his untreated illness.

Over time, she became obsessed—determined to discover the narrative that explained what Kevin had done. The tragedy deeply shook her concept of reality, disrupted her sense of right and wrong, and dismantled every conceivable notion she’d established about herself and her relation to the world. Eventually realizing that she would never have the answers, or find personal peace, unless she went after it herself, Amy returned to Gettysburg—the first time in three years since graduation—to sift through hundreds of pages of public records: mental health evaluations, detectives’ notes, inventories of evidence, search warrants, testimonies, and even Kevin’s own confession.

Visiting Hours is Amy Butcher’s deeply personal, heart-wrenching exploration of how trauma affects memory and the way a friendship changes and often strengthens through seemingly insurmountable challenges. Ultimately, it’s a testament to the bonds we share with others and the profound resilience and strength of the human spirit.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780399183393
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/05/2016
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Amy Butcher’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review online, Tin House online, The Iowa Review, Salon, Gulf Coast, Guernica and Brevity, among others. She earned her MFA from the University of Iowa and is the recipient of awards and grants from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Stanley Foundation for International Research, the Academy of American Poets, and Colgate University’s Olive B. O’Connor Creative Writing Fellowship. She is the recipient of the 2014 Iowa Review award in nonfiction and teaches writing at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Read an Excerpt

My friend, the facts proved, had lost it, and I feared I was losing it, as well. I felt sick, confused by a world that seemed antithetical to the one I’d always known. My whole life, I’d believed the universe depended upon everything fitting together—a quilt of the most careful squares—but there was no fitting in what Kevin had done. There was no place for his behavior.

It seemed chaos, plain and simple.

Every now and then, it crossed my mind to look up my own symptoms: my fear, my agitation, my nightmares and obsessive thoughts. How I spent whole hours imagining Kevin’s face, or the only recollections I had of Emily, or the moments—however few—when I could recall them alone together. The way I felt when it was night. Or when I was in close proximity to a tub. Or with a man, or with a stranger, or with someone I did not trust.

All these symptoms, both big and small, I wished were less a part of me than they were.

Later, I’d undress and stand in the shower until the hot water ran cold. I liked to feel it rush over me, imagine what was wrong as something that could be scrubbed away, like dirt. My fear, panic, all that confusion—I imagined it diluting and draining downwards, spiraling, traveling through a complex network of pipes and into rivers. I saw it float down the Mississippi. I saw it in the surf on a beach in Mexico. I lathered my body slowly, always conscious of my feet: my toenails, red and shining, against the clean, white, empty tub.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“A gripping and poignant memoir.” –Kirkus

“There are horrors in Visiting Hours—some of them emotional, some incomprehensibly not. But what rises above it all in this exhilaratingly honest and brutal debut is what might be the book’s most disturbingly beautiful element: its tribute to memory, its testament of love, and its wide-eyed inquiry into just how long those two things really last.” —John D’Agata, author of About a Mountain

“Amy Butcher asks the two hardest questions: what do we mean to ourselves and what do we mean to each other? She asks in innocence and responds with hard earned experience and wisdom to share. You will need to give Visiting Hours away and buy another for yourself so you have someone to talk to about it. You will keep an eye out for this writer and what she will do next. It is not right that she is so smart, so talented and so young all at the same time. Yes, hers is a debut to envy and here we are at the very beginning.” –Robert Olmstead, author of Coal Black Horse

“Visiting Hours is the culmination of Amy Butcher’s many talents: beautifully dense yet accessible prose rendered with complete honesty. She will make you question everyone you’ve ever thought you’ve known.” —Mary Miller, author of The Last Days of California
"Amy Butcher has written an incredible portrait of trauma. In crisp, beautiful pose, Butcher revisits an extraordinary and terrible night that will come to haunt and trouble her forever. What is the nature of traumatic memory? Whose sadness do we have claim to? What can be done when people we love do terrible things? Butcher's generous and honest meditation on how traumatic memory can shape ordinary lives will make you a better and more empathetic person." —Jen Percy, author of Demon Camp

Reading Group Guide

Reading Group Guide
VISITING HOURS by Amy Butcher
 
1.      Amy Butcher’s memoir opens with an author’s note, in which she identifies Visiting Hours as a work of creative nonfiction. What does that designation mean to you, and how did it shape your reading experience?

2.      In the opening chapter, Amy reflects on her friendship with Kevin while she gets dressed to go see him in prison. How does she get ready for the visit? What do we learn about Amy and her feelings toward Kevin during this scene?

3.      How did the author meet Kevin, and in what ways did their friendship evolve and change over the course of their college career? What major events shaped their friendship during this time?

4.      In reading about Kevin before the crime, and hearing about his personality and interests, how would you characterize him? In what ways might this challenge or reaffirm our notion of who is capable or likely to commit a violent crime?

5.      Amy writes about her picturesque rural Pennsylvania childhood and the frequency with which she visited the historic Gettysburg battlefields near the campus where her parents met and fell in love. In what way do these and other influences shape the narrative and the people in Visiting Hours? How do Amy, Kevin, and others feel tied to or detached from these places?

6.      Amy and Kevin correspond via letter monthly for three years after his arrest. Describe the nature of their letters to each other. What do they talk about? Are they in some way surprising or indicative of a certain age or response to trauma? Why do you think Amy continues this correspondence?

7.      Amy writes: “My hope had always been that when finally I moved to Iowa, I would find the distance necessary to leave Kevin behind.” Think about what happens to Amy in Iowa in Chapters 8 and 9. How does she struggle to leave Kevin behind, and what effect does that take on her relationships and her health? Could you relate in any way to maintaining a friendship that you knew was unhealthy, whether out of a sense of obligation, guilt, or otherwise?

8.      How is mental illness discussed and explored throughout Visiting Hours? What role does it play for Amy, both in her own life and in her understanding of Kevin?

9.      In Chapter 10, Amy explores court documents and public records about the case. What were Amy’s expectations and hopes in acquiring this research and how does she feel having done it?

10.  How does memory play a role in Visiting Hours? How do you read Amy’s recollections in Chapter 11 knowing they might be untrue or inaccurate? In what ways are these stories still valuable to Amy?

11.  What is the effect of cataloging recent examples of violent crimes perpetrated by men in Chapter 14? How does it shape our understanding of Kevin’s crime? Do you feel this crime was in any way preventable?

12.  Describe Amy’s visit to Kevin in prison. Consider especially the briefness of the visit as described in the book. What might this suggest about the nature of the visit? Is it cathartic, disappointing, upsetting? In what ways?

13.  Why does Amy discuss her brother and sister-in-law’s pregnancy on page 231-233? How does that narrative work alongside her decision to end her correspondence with Kevin? Do you feel she has reached a sense of closure? Is such closure possible?

Questions for Amy Butcher, author of Visiting Hours:

How did you feel while writing the book? Was it cathartic? Painful? Confusing?
 
I can honestly say I have never felt more confliction than in the writing and publishing of this book, which began first as a way of exploring and justifying my feelings of empathy for Kevin and what he experienced but very quickly became an exploration of my inability to move beyond that night, the obsession borne from an unresolvable, nonsensical trauma. In its first iteration, this book was solely about Kevin and the crime itself, and it wasn’t until I’d amassed some hundred or so pages that my closest readers—mentors Robin Hemley and Meghan Daum, whose early insight and feedback proved invaluable—suggested the book was not at all about Kevin or the nature of the crime but instead why I couldn’t look away, why I remained tethered to this evening and this event. At the time, it felt very close to drowning; I was a graduate student and undergraduate instructor being afforded the opportunity to finally feel more adult than child, and yet I felt entirely seized by anxiety and panic and a depression so great that I wondered at times, frankly, if I would survive it. I think to a certain extent, there are those of us who experience a propensity for depression and are thusly always looking for causation, but this night held me in the tightest grip and I wanted desperately to escape. And all of this was compounded by the idea that no one in my position should feel so traumatized or upset. I was reminded, more often than not, that what I felt was sort of inappropriate, invalid, not ethically allowed. There is no space to grieve the loss of a friend when that friend committed something as terrible as murder. And this made the guilt and sadness, more often than not, unbearable, because anyone who has felt the grip of depression knows it to be a dulling, ever-present, an altogether sense of numbness, and what felt unfathomable to me was this idea that I could—and should—be able to snap out of it. I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried.
 
I knew, of course, how controversial it would be to write a book about a murder and claim that living on the periphery of that night had affected me so gravely, but it also felt essential; there are very few books in which someone close to the accused—indeed, the self-pronounced guilty—attempts to navigate this sort of terrain. The idea in our collective conscious is that unless you knew and were close to the victim, there’s no reason to feel so upset, or to attempt to work through it aloud. This clearly wasn’t true for me as I suspect it isn’t true for many. It is taboo to say that I grieved for the erasure of Kevin as much as I grieved the loss of his victim.
 
So it became an act of necessity and something I felt fiercely loyal to. That said, I’d never intended to write a memoir at the young age of twenty-six, and at times I think my youth permeates on the page. I look forward to future pursuits that have nothing in the world to do with me, and nothing in the world to do, either, with that evening.
 
Why did you feel the need to stay close with Kevin even when your other friends didn’t?
 
The self-aggrandizing answer would be empathy, pure and simple, and I suppose to a certain extent that is what kept me in correspondence initially. It was empathy that drove me through much of my childhood, beginning with, say, trapping a fly in a cup and releasing it into the world or asking my mother if we can adopt a stray. Simple kid stuff. I think to a certain extent, who we are and what we feel vulnerable to—who we can help, as individuals—is engrained in us to a point, and I know I was always celebrated, too, for whatever compassion I exhibited as a child. I was raised with two brothers, and so my thoughtfulness was always praised above all else, and it’s inevitable that I then began to heighten and value that as a defining trait. So I worried deeply about Kevin, and his emotional and mental wellbeing, and I wanted to keep him company, to accept what he’d done as a terribly grave mistake but without allowing it to define who he was and always had been.
 
But in that answer is a terrible omission, which is to say that I stayed in touch with him, too, because I didn’t know how not to. Simply pretending as if that night hadn’t happened wouldn’t change the fact that it did, and I felt preoccupied by this: that it had happened, that I didn’t understand how it had happened, and that it could therefore happen again, whether to me or to anyone. I can’t say why I felt so affected by what he did, except to say that that night presented a door, through which I stepped through and became someone else. I was in my late teens and early twenties, and while we might categorize people of that age as adults, in the aftermath of what had happened I felt sufficiently a child, and a terrified one, at that. One point I tried especially hard to convey in the book was that I was not alone in my preoccupation; while others may not have written him, or requested or viewed the official files compiled for his criminal case, they went out of their way to make clear to me just how strongly they felt, whether that sentiment was anger or repulsion or the strong desire to forget. How we receive trauma is a process entirely unique to each of us, and just as I’d done my best to accept the ways in which my friends and peers coped, I’d hoped I’d be afforded the same, though that was not always the case. For however much I’d wished I wasn’t, I felt paralyzed that anyone I knew and loved could be so vulnerable to mental and emotional instability, and because no one I knew had ever experienced anything similar—as my mother said that first night, “I generally have some experience with what you’re going through, and I can offer help, but for this, there are no words”—I felt very much stuck in working through what I felt was a recurring trauma: this process of seeking resolution and failing to find it.
 
And then there was Kevin, who no doubt felt everything I felt but tenfold. I couldn’t imagine how scared he felt, how alone, how alien in this sort of guilt and in knowing his mind had betrayed his body. It’s very easy, I think, too easy, to look at someone who has committed a violent crime and impose upon him the mental state we are privileged to in health.
 
Have you found closure about Kevin’s crime? How do you think about it now?
 
It’s complicated, which is the way it has always been. In fact, if there’s one thing that has remained constant about my processing and understanding of that night, it’s that I knew then and I know now that at the core things, this is something beyond the everyday scope and any sort of simplified sense of understanding, about mental wellness, about acts of violence, about the parameters of friendship we share with those we love. I felt and always trusted this was complex, and it was, it will forever be.
 
In a lot of ways, those years and this book are evidence of an urgent and immediate coming-of-age; overnight, I felt ushered into a deeper understanding of what it was to grow up, to accept complexity, to understand a bit more astutely the ways in which life is complicated and messy and terrible, oftentimes very nonsensical and dark. There is who I was prior to that night and who I was immediately after, and perhaps that shift—that transition—would’ve happened naturally and gradually, regardless. But at twenty-one, and for that matter for the three years that followed, I found myself lost in grief and pain and yes, obsession with the one thing that made absolutely no sense.
 
There’s something very permanent, obviously, about the act of writing a memoir. You’re saying, in essence, This is how I feel, and the implicit clause that follows is, Both now and forever. It’s the final word, in a way. But anyone who has ever put thoughts down on paper—which is to say everyone—knows there is no finality, no memory or sentiment or decision that cannot be undone through the passing of time. Nonfiction is an especially delicate genre because of this; we don’t want “tricksters” from our authors, and we love to hate the ones we feel have betrayed the truth. But memory, perception, sentiment—these are not fixed things. These are fluid and always in flux. What seems unequivocally true is that I cared deeply for Kevin, I continue to care deeply for him, and our ongoing correspondence no doubt landed me in the throes of an obsession, dark and ugly, rooted very deeply in mental instability. But like any psychological anguish, it’s impermeable to logical rationalization; I read recently about a hierarchy inherent to trauma and violent crime, one imposed on the traumatized solely by the non-traumatized. But trauma presents its own set of rules, and in my experience it doesn’t care, frankly, whether it’s appropriate or moral to feel grief or pain. It was a period of my life when I was depressed and deeply disturbed and no amount of reasoning could make me otherwise. It passed only with time, which is a gift and continues to be. But it certainly is not true of anyone, and I think the greatest problem this nation faces—and will continue to face—is how to care adequately and compassionately for the mentally ill, without anger, apathy, or fear.

Editorial Reviews

This gripping memoir is every bit as chilling as the darkest Gillian Flynn novel—except this nonfiction account is based entirely on real events…  It's emotional, powerful, and, oddly enough, beautiful.” –Lindsey Eidell, Glamour

“Enthralling, thought provoking, and deeply empathic, Visiting Hours explores how loss and trauma affects everyone in its periphery.” –Biographile

“A gripping and poignant memoir.” –Kirkus

“Riveting and visceral.” –Mardi Jo Link, The Minneapolis Star Tribune

“I couldn’t put down this April release, Visiting Hours: A Memoir of Friendship and Murder, by Amy Butcher. Their senior year at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, Amy’s good friend Kevin walks her home, returns to his apartment and stabs to death his ex-girlfriend. How such a dastardly act affects their friendship – or how it might affect any friendship of our own – kept me riveted.” –Dannye Romine Powell, The Charlotte Observer

“Butcher is strongest in the final chapters, when her eyes turn outward, investigating Schaeffer’s story in light of our country’s alarming suicide rate. Her research offers a tragic portrait of the turn of events that left one young woman dead and another forever changed.” –The New York Times Book Review

“There are horrors in Visiting Hours—some of them emotional, some incomprehensibly not. But what rises above it all in this exhilaratingly honest and brutal debut is what might be the book’s most disturbingly beautiful element: its tribute to memory, its testament of love, and its wide-eyed inquiry into just how long those two things really last.” —John D’Agata, author of About a Mountain

“Amy Butcher asks the two hardest questions: what do we mean to ourselves and what do we mean to each other? She asks in innocence and responds with hard earned experience and wisdom to share. You will need to give Visiting Hours away and buy another for yourself so you have someone to talk to about it. You will keep an eye out for this writer and what she will do next. It is not right that she is so smart, so talented and so young all at the same time. Yes, hers is a debut to envy and here we are at the very beginning.” –Robert Olmstead, author of Coal Black Horse

“Visiting Hours is the culmination of Amy Butcher’s many talents: beautifully dense yet accessible prose rendered with complete honesty. She will make you question everyone you’ve ever thought you’ve known.” —Mary Miller, author of The Last Days of California

"Amy Butcher has written an incredible portrait of trauma. In crisp, beautiful pose, Butcher revisits an extraordinary and terrible night that will come to haunt and trouble her forever. What is the nature of traumatic memory? Whose sadness do we have claim to? What can be done when people we love do terrible things? Butcher's generous and honest meditation on how traumatic memory can shape ordinary lives will make you a better and more empathetic person." —Jen Percy, author of Demon Camp
 
“Visiting Hours is a mystery of the highest order, not merely a whodunit, as we know from the outset who killed whom, but a mystery of the human heart, exploring the ambiguous motivations of an otherwise gentle man who became a murderer and a young woman who couldn’t stop being his friend. A page turner for its pathos and gorgeous attention to language, a coming of age story like no other, Amy Butcher has written a story of no easy answers and unparalleled sensitivity.” –Robin Hemley,  author of Do Over 

From the Publisher

What William Styron's Darkness Visible approaches from an insider's perspective, Visiting Hours addresses from an outside viewpoint, that of the family and friends who often feel at a loss to help. Butcher is strongest in the final chapters, when her eyes turn outward, investigating Schaeffer's story in light of our country's alarming suicide rate. Her research offers a tragic portrait of the turn of events that left one young woman dead and another forever changed.

The New York Times Book Review - Judy Blunt

Beautifully dense yet accessible prose rendered with complete honesty. She will make you question everyone you’ve ever thought you’ve known.”

author of The Last Days of California Mary Miller

There are horrors in Visiting Hours—some of them emotional, some incomprehensibly not. But what rises above it all in this exhilaratingly honest and brutal debut is what might be the book’s most disturbingly beautiful element: its tribute to memory, its testament of love, and its wide-eyed inquiry into just how long those two things really last.”

author of About a Mountain John D’Agata

At the heart of this story, beyond Butcher’s search to understand the incomprehensible, lies our societal failure to recognize serious depression as the potentially fatal illness that it is…What William Styron’s Darkness Visible approaches from an insider’s perspective, Visiting Hours addresses from an outside viewpoint, that of the family and friends who often feel at a loss to help. Butcher is strongest in the final chapters, when her eyes turn outward, investigating Schaeffer’s story in light of our country’s alarming suicide rate.”

New York Times Book Review

Amy Butcher asks the two hardest questions: what do we mean to ourselves and what do we mean to each other? She asks in innocence and responds with hard earned experience and wisdom to share. You will need to give Visiting Hours away and buy another for yourself so you have someone to talk to about it.”

author of Coal Black Horse Robert Olmstead

An incredible portrait of trauma. In crisp, beautiful pose…Butcher’s generous and honest meditation on how traumatic memory can shape ordinary lives will make you a better and more empathetic person.”

author of Demon Camp Jen Percy

2014-12-15
A writer and professor's account of the trauma she suffered in the wake of a murder committed by a close friend.Defunct magazine editor Butcher (English/Ohio Wesleyan Univ.) met Kevin Schaeffer, the sweet-faced boy who would become her best friend, three days into her freshman year at Gettysburg College. They were kindred spirits who "enjoyed familiarity in all things," found solace in each other for being social outsiders and knew "absolutely nothing of loss." Then, less than two months before their graduation in 2009, Kevin suddenly snapped and stabbed to death his ex-girlfriend, Emily Silverstein. Like the rest of Gettysburg, Butcher was stunned. But what she found especially disturbing was that two hours before the murder, a normal-seeming Kevin had walked her home from an evening out. The aftermath of the murder caused chaos in the author's personal life and relationships, yet she stubbornly refused to abandon her friend when almost everyone else did. Tormented by survivor's guilt and eventually diagnosed with PTSD, Butcher became obsessed with the incident and with trying to understand the reasons behind her friend's behavior. She scoured her memories and public documents for clues. What she discovered were dark truths about the nature of their relationship. Kevin was a depressive who had tried to commit suicide during his junior year. When he murdered his girlfriend, it was after he had stopped taking his antidepressants. Butcher had understood Kevin's impulse toward self-destruction because she had experienced it as a young teen. Yet she had done nothing to help him. Ultimately, the author realized that her distress came from the fact that her best friend's actions had presented her with a mirror image of her own heart. With equal parts horror and anguish, she understood that "the chain of events that led to Emily's death [were] events that could happen to any of us." A gripping and poignant memoir.

Kirkus Reviews