Book Review
Never in life will one fully understand what motivates a person to steal a child. In the novel My Story written by Elizabeth Smart with Chris Stewart, fourteen year old Elizabeth encountered an event that no child should experience. Anyone intrigued by the present wicked world will find My Story a great read. The intriguing story unraveled, with a plot that became more twisted chapter after chapter.
My Story is filled with many disturbing experiences Elizabeth faced as her days consisted of rapes, starvation, and brainwashing. Unfortunate Elizabeth had no obvious means of escaping the madness. Months pass by and you began to wonder if Elizabeth will ever return home. The novel grasps the reader’s attention with Elizabeth’s incredible fortitude she exhibits throughout her anguish.
The book will draw the reader into Elizabeth’s sufferings. After learning and become greatly attached to her as an individual. Finishing the book was almost as if it was an obligation, to see the end result of her happening. From reading, “Was it going to help me to survive? That was the only thing that mattered. Whatever it took to live another day” (123) Elizabeth’s determination to live becomes the reader’s determination to finish reading about her story.
Towards the end of the book I realized that the only motivation a person could possibly have for kidnapping a child is cowardliness. Mitchell did not take Elizabeth because it was his “mission from God”, he stole her because the man is a coward.