First published 2009
Jennifer Thompson wakes to find a man with a knife in her apartment. He rapes her, but she escapes and studies his face carefully, determined to help police catch him. She identifies Ronald Cotton in a lineup, certain he attacked her. Her testimony sends Cotton to prison for eleven years. Then DNA testing proves Cotton innocent. The real rapist was someone else entirely. Thompson must confront the fact that her memory failed her completely. Cotton walks free after more than a decade behind bars for a crime he never committed. Two years later, the woman whose testimony imprisoned him and the man who suffered for her mistake meet in person. They begin an unexpected friendship that transforms both their lives. Thompson and Cotton tell their story together, examining how memory can deceive us and how two people damaged by the same terrible mistake found their way to forgiveness.
Genres: crime, social-issues, non-fiction, biography-memoir
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: redemption, unreliable-narrator
Setting: United States
Period: 20th-century
298 pages · Hardcover · St. Martin's Press
Content warnings: racism, rape