Dancing with the Octopus

The Telling of a True Crime

By: Debora Harding

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Hardcover | 27 August 2020

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A fierce, strikingly redemptive exploration of the impact of traumatic violence on victim, perpetrator and society.

One Omaha winter day in 1978, when Debora Harding was just fourteen, she was abducted at knife-point, thrown into a van, assaulted, held for ransom, and left to die.

But what if this wasn't the most traumatic, defining event in her childhood?

Undertaking a radical project, Debora Harding dexterously shifts between the past and present to unravel her story. From the immediate aftermath to the possibility of restorative justice twenty years later, Dancing with the Octopus lays bare the social and political forces that act upon us after the experience of serious crime. A vivid, sly and intimate portrait of one family's disintegration, this is a darkly humorous and ground-breaking narrative of reckoning and recovery.

About the Author

Debora Harding wrote the final version of this story after watching Christine Blasey Ford's testimony against Trump nominee Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, in 2018. A writer whose work has appeared in the Guardian, Daily Mail and elsewhere, she has trained as a mediator in restorative justice and worked in US politics, amongst other things. The mother of two children, she spent her childhood in Nebraska and Iowa and now lives in England with her British husband.

Industry Reviews

a searing literary work that will help many of us see trauma in a different light. In strong and powerful prose Debora Harding shows us what it means to move forward through grief.
Julia Samuel, author of * This Too Shall Pass *

Dancing with the Octopus is a brave and authentic picture of the tailwinds of trauma, the limits of human forgiveness and what it takes to maintain hope in a world bent on breaking us. Highly readable, and deeply moving.
Rachel Louise Snyder, awardwinning author of * No Visible Bruises *

A gripping account of one woman's confrontation with the terror and heartbreak of her past. Harding combines true crime and family saga to illustrate the aftershocks of trauma, and the courage, tenderness, and humor that recovery requires.
Melissa Febos, author of * Abandon Me *

Debora Harding writes with a stunningly original mixture of insight, wit, and humanity about a life packed with so much drama, loss and resilience that you can't believe its not an epic work of fiction.
Kate Weinberg, author of * The Truants *

Extraordinary, so powerful and like nothing I've read. Astonishing book. It deserves to be the most massive hit.
Kate Mosse

I have just finished reading Dancing with the Octopus... You are lucky! The electricity of this true crime memoir awaits you.
Lemn Sissay (via Twitter)

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