by Kerri Rawson
First published 2019
Kerri Rawson lived with unexplained night terrors throughout her childhood, never understanding their source. In 2005, FBI agents appeared at her apartment door with devastating news. Her father Dennis Rader had confessed to being BTK, the serial killer who murdered ten people over thirty-one years in Wichita, Kansas. The man who raised her as a loving father, served as church president and Boy Scout leader, had used his family as cover for binding, torturing, and killing his victims. Two of those victims were children. Seven families lost loved ones while Rader maintained his double life since before Kerri was born. As Wichita celebrated the end of their nightmare, Kerri's began. She faced the impossible task of reconciling the father she knew with the monster he had become. Rawson tells her story with unflinching honesty, examining how she survived the discovery and began healing from betrayal, violence, and loss. Her account explores forgiveness, rebuilding life after devastating truth, and maintaining sanity when everything familiar becomes suspect.
Genres: abuse, crime, non-fiction, biography-memoir, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: Wichita, Kansas
Period: 2005
336 pages · Paperback · Thomas Nelson
Content warnings: abuse, violence