If a book can make me cry it deserves 5 stars.

This riveting story is about Fran and Bobby Benedetto. They fell in love when they were young, and before they were even married Bobby started to show his violent nature. "The first time my husband hit me I was nineteen years old," begins Fran Benedetto. A heartbreaking story of how the years of abuse accumulated. Fran didn't want to leave Bobby because of their son, Robert. Plus, as Bobby said, What was she going to do? Call the cops? Bobby was a police officer. She finally had a home with friends, and she enjoyed her job at the local hospital as a nurse. But one day, Fran decides to leave Bobby with the help of a secret agency.

The agency relocates her to Florida, and tentatively she begins to rebuild her life. Robert starts a new school, she a new job, and they begin to make new friends. She is still fearful of the shadows, what lurks behind every corner, but she is trying. She really misses her sister Grace though. They spoke on the phone every day and when she left, she didn't tell anyone where she was going.

The story escalates to a heartbreaking ending, but one with hope. This being the first Anna Quindlen book I've read, I have to say I wasn't disappointed. The characters were emotional and the story gut-wrenching. Definitely will be looking for more from this author in the future.

This book moved along quickly and I found myself feeling frightened for Fran and wanting to shake some sense into her at the same time. Her abusive husband was a control freak and a bully and I kept rooting for her to get up the gumption to escape long before she did. Sometimes it annoyed me that she allowed herself to be hurt so badly, especially with her young son witnessing this atrocious behavior. Because I work as a standardized patient at the medical school near our home, where I play the victim of an abusive husband, I have learned that, sadly, the woman often thinks it's something she has said or done that perpetuates the abuse. The abused wife often thinks it's her fault and if she acts differently it will stop. This book clearly shows that that is just not so. Women need to learn that the first time a man raises his hand to you, should be the last. Fran took a very long time and endured much unspeakable abuse, until she'd finally had enough and put the safety of her and her son first. I did find it suspenseful wondering if her husband, being a cop, would be able to find her.

Incredible and heartbreaking story of a mother's courage to protect herself and her young son from the hands of her violent and abusive husband. I have a young son of my own and I could completely relate to Fran and her intense need to do whatever it took to ensure his safety and well-being. This book will stay with me for a very long time.

I really enjoy Anna Qundlen’s writing style. I initially read this book in 1999. I have read it twice since. It sprang to mind when I was reviewing Jess Hill’s Stella Prize winning book today. Hence my writing the review.

This is a very well written book focused on a woman who is a survivor of domestic abuse and her 10 year old son. She is an educated woman, a nurse who has seen swathes of other abused women, and her husband is a cop. It’s a sad and depressing read, of course, but also has themes of emancipation and hope.

Quindlen sets out well why the abused woman remains in such a relationship until they've been there such a long time that to escape is to risk her life and that of her child. It’s written with such empathy and such personal detail that one assumes Quindlen had a friend or family member in this terrible position.

Fran Benedetto, a mother, stayed with her abusive husband Bobby for what she believed were the right reasons. One day comes that is even more dispiriting than others, and Fran decides she must save herself and her son, Robert. She recognised that Bobby was crushing her son Robert’s spirit, scarring him emotionallly and mentally by what he had heard and seen of his mum’s abuse.

Fran takes a risk finally and shares her fears for her son with a local organisation that helps women in her horrendous position to disappear and start new lives. They will relocate her and her son and give them new identities. They give her advice on how and when to leave her abuser.

The risks of leaving her husband are huge, as are the alienating factors. Connections with friends and family have to be severed irrevocably with no chance to bid them farewell because of the need for an abrupt departure. A young child has to be wrenched from all he knows and taught to be ultra careful and vigilant in what he says and does in the future, because he now has a new name and identity to remember.

This is a poignant book with shades of hope and freedom.

A great, painful read

Reading this book felt like becoming the battered Fran Benedetto. Quindlen inhabited her character so thoroughly that reading it felt like walking around in Fran's shoes as she escaped her husband, raised her child and tried to build a new life for herself. So much of this book was devastating, but at the same time it felt run through with truth, so that you feel like you have to stay, to keep turning pages, to bear witness to this life. I don't know that I'll be in a hurry to read this again, and if spousal abuse is a trigger, definitely stay away, but I'm glad to have read it now.

2015 Reading Challenge: A book from Oprah's book club.

Well, for some reason I thought this was going to be a thriller or suspenseful....A woman flees her abusive husband with her son, using a secret organization who relocates battered women and creates a new life and a new identity for them where their husband can't find them. So, I thought there was going to be some suspense, like the husband tracks them down and there's a few chapters of her trying to escape before she finally confronts him in an exciting showdown and gets even for all the years of abuse.

Nah....instead this was a book about *feelings*. Lots of back story about how she fell in love with her husband and why it took her so long to leave. Lots of emotion about her ten-year-old son and the confusion that he was going through by leaving his beloved day in order to relocate somewhere new with a new identity. Feelings, feelings, feelings.

And that's all fine...but it's not the book for me. The writing was good, and it was easy to read through the whole book....but I didn't feel hooked. The same story with a thriller edge would have been perfect, but instead this felt a bit flat for me.

3.5
A very sad story about wife abuse and how the children suffer as well.

This book was one I didn't want to put down. I loved it! I am going to find more by her to read.

This was a really well done treatment of a difficult topic (an abused woman runs away from her husband along with her son). Having the book start with the main character running away and dealing with her life following that, but including flashbacks, was an great approach to telling the story and demonstrating her emotions. I'm really glad that I read this book.

This book was so slow that I forgot about the “accident at a fairground puts Fran into the public eye” I read in the blurb until it happened in the book. Like, completely forgot about it to the extent that I was like “where is this book even going?”. Too descriptive and unnecessarily long winded for my liking.

This book first came out in 1998 and is about a woman in an abusive marriage who finally decides to leave after 15 years. At the time I read the book I was married to an abusive husband and really identified with the characters. I did end up leaving my 14 year marriage less than a year later.