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Biography & Autobiography Personal Memoirs

Trapped

A Mother's Quest to Reclaim Her Daughters

by (author) Alexandra Karb

Publisher
Guernica Editions
Initial publish date
Apr 2019
Category
Personal Memoirs, Women
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781771833486
    Publish Date
    Apr 2019
    List Price
    $25.00

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Description

When Alexandra attempts to end an abusive marriage, her husband Tareq abducts their infant daughters from their Montreal home and deposits them with his family in a primitive village in Jordan. Trying to retrieve them through legal means, Alexandra comes face to face with Arab cultures where children belong to the father's family and women have no rights to them. She puts a promising career as a medical researcher on hold, sets off alone to Jordan and succeeds in an audacious plan to smuggle her daughters back home. But upon returning to Canada, she finds a judicial system that is unable to protect her children from being kidnapped again -- this time for good, forcing her back to a life with the abusive husband. For the next twenty years, while achieving a PhD and working as a respected scientist, she submits to her husband's tyranny for the sake of her daughters. Her coping mechanism is to dissociate herself from constant verbal and emotional abuse and live as an observant stranger trapped in a life not of h

About the author

Born in Germany, Alexandra Karb grew up in Montreal. She studied science and pursued a rewarding career in medical research, but lived a personal life of trauma. This is a memoir of her twenty-year odyssey in several countries to protect her young daughters and herself from tyranny in their own home.

Alexandra Karb's profile page

Excerpt: Trapped: A Mother's Quest to Reclaim Her Daughters (by (author) Alexandra Karb)

With horror, I understood Tareq was doing what he had always done to me. The facts as well as my reality and experience, were all twisted and misrepresented. I wondered, would he succeed with this strategy in the court?I was silent and gazed at the judge on his high bench, a dignified older gentleman with grey hair, wearing a long black robe. Does he have any idea what life is like in a Jordanian village? Has he seen how little girls are treated there? Does he care? I thought.

Editorial Reviews

Trapped is a harrowing yet enlightening true story not just of abuse, but of the consequences of fear.

Ottawa Review of Books

A tragic yet inspiring story of a mother’s sacrifice and courage to protect her children from being kidnapped by their father a second time. However the cost of her sacrifice leaves a history and present of wounds and scars that run deep for Alexandra and her daughters.

Lorinda Stewart, best selling author of One Day Closer

This true story has insights that will resonate for women readers and for men who take seriously the challenges posed by gender injustice and misogyny.

Vancouver Sun

Alexandra Karb’s story is so incredible and dramatic as to defy belief. That it actually happened will only enhance readers’ investment in this gripping, moving, and important story about a woman’s quest for autonomy, a mother’s love, and a heroine’s journey through trauma and loss into light and peace.

Priscilla Gilman, author of The Anti-Romantic Child: A Story of Unexpected Joy and The Critic’s Daughter