Women We Buried, Women We Burned

A Memoir

By: Rachel Louise Snyder

Narrated by: Rachel Louise Snyder

For decades, Rachel Louise Snyder has been a fierce advocate reporting on the darkest social issues that impact women's lives. This is her own story.

Snyder was eight years old when her mother died, and her distraught father thrust the family into an evangelical, cult-like existence halfway across the country. Furiously rebellious, she was expelled from school and home at age sixteen. Living out of her car and relying on strangers, Rachel found herself masquerading as an adult, talking her way into college, and eventually traveling the globe.

Survival became her reporter's beat. In places like India, Tibet, and Niger, she interviewed those who had been through the unimaginable. In Cambodia, where she lived for six years, she watched a country reckon with the horrors of its own recent history. When she returned to the States with a family of her own, it was with a new perspective on old family wounds, and a chance for healing from the most unexpected place.

A piercing account of Snyder's journey from teenage runaway to reporter on the global epidemic of domestic violence, Women We Buried, Women We Burned is a memoir that embodies the transformative power of resilience.

©2023 Rachel Louise Snyder (P)2023 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Gripping and heartbreaking story

Wonderful writing, powerful story, beautifully read. Absolutely will recommend this book to anyone and everyone!

Profound, soul bearing and searing

This memoir of loss is so truthful that it is a gift. It is an unsentimental and yet validating narrative of a child to who lost a mother at a young age, and who unwittingly became the bearer of her surviving father's grief, soon thereafter thrust into an alien reality.

In this coming of age reflection, we travel with the author through her survival in a terribly mismatched, never-to-blend "new" family, with a stepmother whose Midwestern poverty and lack of empowerment stand in poor contrast to her real mother's quiet elegance and humor.

She also loses the father she knew, as he veered from being a tolerant, supportive figure into an abusive authoritarian, grasping at evangelism.

It's a kind of loss in every dimension - new mother, new siblings, new home, new way of living. And nothing new is is better, just bleaker and unwelcomed by the young Rachel Louise Snyder. As a child, I used to fear this, as versions of this unfolded in other children around me, and whose own parents experienced aspects of this.

As life becomes more unbearable, Ms. Snyder proves the power of memory and love. She knows she must free herself to build something of her own. She struggles against the odds as she breaks from a cruel belief system she cannot accept. You will never look at a teenager walking on the side of a road during school hours the same way again. Rebellious hellions might not have a clear road map, but if they are like the author, they are escaping misery, seeking light in the distance. They might not have the words to describe it, but likely they'll have the physical and or emotional scars that explain the need for escape.

From that hell emerges a bright, perceptive young adult. She manages to meet enough kind souls along the way to point the way to that faraway light. From high school dropout to college and beyond.

At its heart, this story is warm, and embracing. There's no whitewashing of the here to there globe-trotting journey, whether it's the author's own mistakes or those of the people in her life. Yet, as it has been said, given enough information, everything makes sense. And I think that's what I most appreciated about Ms. Snyder's reflections. She sees life in full, and takes us on as intimate traveling companions as she connects the dots in families and cultures around the world.

Deeply personal, honest, and raw

Bravely written and very well read by the author herself. Appreciated the opportunity to hear her story and her willingness to share both pain and enlightened moments with us.

Gritty. Sad. Hopeful. Beautiful.

So much complexity for a young mind to handle. And to dig out and thrive is truly remarkable. Well told. Builds compassion.

Excellent!

I grew up in Naperville and know some of the people mentioned in this tale. I think is was very well written. I think that it was perfect for the author to read her own tale. To be able to articulate her own story of abuse and becoming the woman that she is today. I will listen to this book over and over, thank you for telling your story.