Jeanette Powers

Victimless Crime Jeanette Powers

"He's alive and the worst thing about that is that it makes me free. I don't have to keep sitting shiva with Schrodinger's Dummy in the bed we used to share. He's alive and nothing is burning down. There is only myself to reckon with. I chew on the edge of my right hand thumbnail and stare at the places where the wall spackle looks like a laughing toothless woman made of salt."

Victimless Crime is a gut wrenching grenade of a story that hits the nerve of every person who's stayed too long in a abusive partnership. Written in the wake of the #metoo movement, the book brings the reader into the heart of a woman de-humanized and struggling to make life right. The story plays out through three days of this woman waiting for her partner to come out of his bedroom: where she's actually sure he's dead of an overdose or suicide, but will not open the door to check on him. Our unreliable narrator bounces between memory and moment to tell a tale of profound revelation, deep trauma, and how to navigate and survive a world full of addiction, sexual abuse, rape, self-harm, mental illness and toxic relationships.