Dancing with the Octopus (Hardback)
The Telling of a True Crime
Buy from
A fierce, strikingly redemptive exploration of the impact of traumatic violence on victim, perpetrator and society
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION*
'Extraordinary' Kate Mosse
'Electric' Lemn Sissay
'Searing' Julia Samuel
One Omaha winter day in 1978, when Debora Harding was just fourteen, she was abducted at knife-point, thrown into a van, assaulted, held for ransom, and left to die.
But what if this wasn't the most traumatic, defining event in her childhood?
Undertaking a radical project, Debora Harding dexterously shifts between the past and present to unravel her story. From the immediate aftermath to the possibility of restorative justice twenty years later, Dancing with the Octopus lays bare the social and political forces that act upon us after the experience of serious crime. A vivid, sly and intimate portrait of one family's disintegration, this is a darkly humorous and ground-breaking narrative of reckoning and recovery.
Dancing with the Octopus (Ebook)
The Telling of a True Crime
Buy from
A fierce, strikingly redemptive exploration of the impact of traumatic violence on victim, perpetrator and society
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION*
'Extraordinary' Kate Mosse
'Electric' Lemn Sissay
'Searing' Julia Samuel
One Omaha winter day in 1978, when Debora Harding was just fourteen, she was abducted at knife-point, thrown into a van, assaulted, held for ransom, and left to die.
But what if this wasn't the most traumatic, defining event in her childhood?
Undertaking a radical project, Debora Harding dexterously shifts between the past and present to unravel her story. From the immediate aftermath to the possibility of restorative justice twenty years later, Dancing with the Octopus lays bare the social and political forces that act upon us after the experience of serious crime. A vivid, sly and intimate portrait of one family's disintegration, this is a darkly humorous and ground-breaking narrative of reckoning and recovery.
Dancing with the Octopus (Audiobook)
The Telling of a True Crime
Buy from
A fierce, strikingly redemptive exploration of the impact of traumatic violence on victim, perpetrator and society
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION*
'Extraordinary' Kate Mosse
'Electric' Lemn Sissay
'Searing' Julia Samuel
One Omaha winter day in 1978, when Debora Harding was just fourteen, she was abducted at knife-point, thrown into a van, assaulted, held for ransom, and left to die.
But what if this wasn't the most traumatic, defining event in her childhood?
Undertaking a radical project, Debora Harding dexterously shifts between the past and present to unravel her story. From the immediate aftermath to the possibility of restorative justice twenty years later, Dancing with the Octopus lays bare the social and political forces that act upon us after the experience of serious crime. A vivid, sly and intimate portrait of one family's disintegration, this is a darkly humorous and ground-breaking narrative of reckoning and recovery.
Dancing with the Octopus (Paperback)
The Telling of a True Crime
Buy from
A fierce, strikingly redemptive exploration of the impact of traumatic violence on victim, perpetrator and society
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION*
'Extraordinary' Kate Mosse
'Electric' Lemn Sissay
'Searing' Julia Samuel
One Omaha winter day in 1978, when Debora Harding was just fourteen, she was abducted at knife-point, thrown into a van, assaulted, held for ransom, and left to die.
But what if this wasn't the most traumatic, defining event in her childhood?
Undertaking a radical project, Debora Harding dexterously shifts between the past and present to unravel her story. From the immediate aftermath to the possibility of restorative justice twenty years later, Dancing with the Octopus lays bare the social and political forces that act upon us after the experience of serious crime. A vivid, sly and intimate portrait of one family's disintegration, this is a darkly humorous and ground-breaking narrative of reckoning and recovery.
Reviews for Dancing with the Octopus
Julia Samuel, author of This Too Shall Pass
Rachel Louise Snyder, award-winning author of No Visible Bruises
Melissa Febos, author of Abandon Me
Kate Weinberg, author of The Truants
Kate Mosse
Lemn Sissay (via Twitter)
Jessamy Calkin Daily Telegraph
Paul Chahidi (via Twitter)
Jane Garvey Woman's Hour
CrimeReads - Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2020
Jeremy Vine BBC Radio 2
Cambridge Review of Books
Debora Harding
DEBORA HARDING spent her childhood in the Midwestern prairie states of Nebraska and Iowa. At the age of nineteen she dropped out of university to work for Senator Gary Hart's presidential campaign,
before relocating to Washington, D.C., to run an environmental non-profit. Fed up with politics, she cycled across America where she met her English husband, author Thomas Harding. She then joined him in the UK and worked at an award-winning video production company that focused on the counter-culture protest movement in Europe. Later, she co-founded the UK's first local television station in Oxford and gave birth to two children, Kadian and Sam. Wanting the children to enjoy the great outdoors, the family moved back to the USA, and Debora trained as a restorative justice mediator and ran an independent bicycle business. She is now a full-time writer and activist and splits her time between the United States and England.