Where the River Bends: A Memoir

On a balmy October night in New Orleans, a group of teenage students gathers to listen to music and drink wine on the bank of the Mississippi River. In the midst of their revelry, a lone young man approaches them as a friendly stranger. In the following hour, he commits acts of sexual violence that have permanent lasting effects on his four young victims. In an intimate, unsparingly honest first-person account, Barry Raine, one of the victims, recounts this brutal encounter. Meditating on race, social class, male honor, and the rigid mores of the South, the author weaves a disturbing but ultimately hopeful story of loss and redemption.