It feels weird to rate a book like this, knowing the depths of both love and despair that has gone into the Wetterling family's journey since Jacob was stolen from them on October 22nd, 1989, so I am not going to.
This won't really be a review either, because how do you review something so traumatic that happened to someone else, that traumatized an entire state as a result?
In loving and excrutiating detail, Patty Wetterling shares the entire story of her family's nightmare, from the horrifying beginning to the heart-shattering end.
That fall day in 1989 was like any other. Patty and Jerry were going to a gathering while the kids stayed home. The boys were restless and wanted to go rent a video from a nearby gas station, so they called to ask permission. On the way back, a man came out of the darkness, took eleven year old Jacob at gun point, and managed to get away with his crime for 27 years - despite having initially been a person of interest.
Finally, finally, on September 2nd, 2016, Jacob's remains were recovered and he was brought home.
Patty shares so much, detailing those first frenzied days and weeks of the search, at one point even being told Jacob was most likely dead but they would find him. She recounts how the family struggled in their new reality and each dealt with it in different ways.
As the months turned to years, Patty spent that time working tirelessly to lobby for a national sex offender registry and in 1994 Congress passed the Jaob Wetterling Act to establish it. Patty had become an advocate for missing children, working with organizations to train others, and to bring together information in an organized way that could be accessible across the country. In the years when no new information was coming in, Patty was determined to help other families find their loved ones, and worked to help protect, search for, and save missing and exploited children.
In 2013 two others became instrumental in getting answers for the Wetterlings. A local blogger named Joy Baker had been in contact with a young man named Jared Scheierl, who came forward with his story of being kidnapped from a nearby town and sexually assaulted in the same year Jacob disappeared. In turn they would find several cases of young boys who had been kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and then released by a monster whose name I won't even type. Yet there was no police follow-up in any of the cases, and he was free to go on hurting children.
At first authorities and even Patty thought it could not have been the same man - he always let his victims go. But as they continued looking into the evidence and patterns, it became clear who the culprit was. And on that September day, he lead investigators to the field where he'd buried Jacob almost three decades earlier.
My entire childhood changed the night Jacob went missing. I was five at the time but even at that age, I understood something was now fundamentally different - forever. We could no longer just run across the neighbor's lawn to our friends' homes two or three houses away. Parents had eyes on us at all times, never more than a few feet away, always looking for danger. It was like the entire state of Minnesota had decided in an instant that children were never to be alone ever again.
And truly, it is why I hold Eleanor so close, even as she pushes back against boundaries at twelve. The thought of letting her go outside by herself to ride her bike or hover board or scooter makes me sick. I can not take my eyes off of her because I learned at a very young age what can happen if you do, and that core memory has pushed its way down so deeply into my bones, my very being. Even at the water park the other day, I could not let myself relax and enjoy my book while she played with new friends. Every ten seconds I was looking around, almost frantic until each time I would find her, blissfully unaware of my panic as she splashed and swam.
It's why I always have to make sure she enters the school doors before I drive away. Why I've taught her to yell, "MOM!" or "FIRE!" if she is in danger, because just yelling for help is not enough. Why I've endlessly drilled into her head, if something happens, DO NOT get taken to a second location, fight like hell with everything you have. Fight dirty, nothing is off limits - gouge the eyes, go for the kneecaps from the side, kicks to the groin repeatedly, over and over, do not stop fighting. From a young age, if anyone touched her inappropriately, to scream as loud as she could, "Stop touching me! Get away from me!" And I still feel like it is not enough to keep her safe.
I can not fathom the pain of losing a child at all, let alone in such a cruel way, and to just NOT KNOW for so long. Up until the end, until the man finally confessed, Patty held onto hope that Jacob was alive - even when logic dictated otherwise. Jaycee Dugard had come home, so had Elizabeth Smart, and the three young women who had been kidnapped in Cleveland and held captive for years, Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight.
This was a gut-wrenching read and I sobbed through the last few chapters, when the end was finally in sight and we would know once and for all what happened to Jacob. In reality I knew most of it already from news reports, but hearing it from Patty herself was heartbreaking all over again. To explain the information her family received, finally knowing everything that had happened to him, how he'd asked to go home, how he was cold and scared and crying, was overwhelming. Patty did not have to share these most personal moments, but she chose to and I think part of the reason why is because so many felt like Jacob was ours, too. He was our brother or our friend, and even though it was this hugely awful thing, we would bear it together.
Highly, highly recommended.
I won't be reading this one, but kudos to you for doing so and reporting on the experience.
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