Helpful Score: 4
Short but well written.
FROM THE PUBLISHER:
When Sara Foster is kidnapped in front of an abortion clinic in broad daylight, taken off a busy Manhattan street by a pair of total strangers-Stephan and Katherine Teach-she is three months pregnant with her married lover's child.
Her abductors seem to know that. They also seem to know where she lives, where she teaches, where she was born, who her lover is-even where her father plays golf on the weekends. They tell her about a mysterious worldwide Organization devoted to white slavery and what happens to those slaves who try to run away. What happens to their families and those they love.
That's what Sara is now. Their slave.
They show her what happens if she tries to disobey.
She sleeps in a coffin-like box in the basement.
She's fed according to their whim. Abused according to their whim.
They involve her in a brutal murder.
That's just the beginning. Because Stephen and Katherine Teach have terrible plans for Sara.
And her baby.
Like his novels JOYRIDE, STRANGLEHOLD, THE GIRL NEXT DOOR and COVER. RIGHT TO LIFE is a descent into madness and human evil which is all the more harrowing because it's based on fact. Sara's ordeal really happened to somebody just like you and me and it's one that is vividly rendered. So consider yourself warmed. This is disturbing, graphic writing.
Not for the timid.
Like life.
FROM THE PUBLISHER:
When Sara Foster is kidnapped in front of an abortion clinic in broad daylight, taken off a busy Manhattan street by a pair of total strangers-Stephan and Katherine Teach-she is three months pregnant with her married lover's child.
Her abductors seem to know that. They also seem to know where she lives, where she teaches, where she was born, who her lover is-even where her father plays golf on the weekends. They tell her about a mysterious worldwide Organization devoted to white slavery and what happens to those slaves who try to run away. What happens to their families and those they love.
That's what Sara is now. Their slave.
They show her what happens if she tries to disobey.
She sleeps in a coffin-like box in the basement.
She's fed according to their whim. Abused according to their whim.
They involve her in a brutal murder.
That's just the beginning. Because Stephen and Katherine Teach have terrible plans for Sara.
And her baby.
Like his novels JOYRIDE, STRANGLEHOLD, THE GIRL NEXT DOOR and COVER. RIGHT TO LIFE is a descent into madness and human evil which is all the more harrowing because it's based on fact. Sara's ordeal really happened to somebody just like you and me and it's one that is vividly rendered. So consider yourself warmed. This is disturbing, graphic writing.
Not for the timid.
Like life.
Helpful Score: 2
I requested Right to Life hoping to read more about abortion portrayed in literature, without knowing that Stephen King had decreed that Disney would certainly never make a movie based on a Jack Ketchum novel. Right to Life is a novella inspired by real events about the experiences of a woman kidnapped in front of the abortion clinic by a couple who seems to know the details of her life. Although they are anti-abortion protesters, the man is best described as a sexual sadist with a submissive accomplice wife. Ketchum does a good job of portraying the terror from the victims perspective at the beginning of her ordeal, but as the story pans out through the duration of her captivity, the writing, characterizations of the abductors, and plot seemed more sparse and unpolished. The story is graphic and disturbing, not for the faint of heart. The two accompanying short stories, Brave Girl and Returns, are short snapshots that play to Kitchums talent for the literary equivalent of the quick, intense sketch.
this novella is included in the Jack Ketchum book "Old Flames"
it will probably be the only way you will get the chance to read this short story.
it will probably be the only way you will get the chance to read this short story.
