Jentz, Terri 1957-

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Jentz, Terri 1957-

PERSONAL:

Born 1957. Education: Graduated from Yale University.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Los Angeles, CA. Agent— Lavin Agency, 222 Third St., Ste. 1130, Cambridge, MA 02142.

CAREER:

Writer and screenwriter.

WRITINGS:

Strange Piece of Paradise (memoir), Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to such publications as the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

SIDELIGHTS:

Terri Jentz was an undergraduate at Yale University in 1977 when she and a college roommate decided to take a summer adventure vacation, biking across the country from Oregon to the East Coast. They stopped to camp at Cline Falls State Park, near Redmond, Oregon, and while they slept, someone drove a truck into their tent and attacked both Terri and her friend with a hatchet. Both girls were seriously injured by the time the attacker, quite inexplicably, stopped his assault and left, yet they survived the ordeal. Fifteen years later, Jentz returned to Oregon to talk to people about the case, which was still unsolved, and to gain a measure of closure. Her efforts eventually led to a strong suspect, but due to the length of time that had passed, the statute of limitations had expired, and he was not charged. In Strange Piece of Paradise, Jentz recounts her experiences, both during the attack itself and when she returned so many years later to find her answers. John E. Boyd, in a review for Kliatt, called Jentz's effort "a scary, spine-tingling, real-life adventure." A contributor for Kirkus Reviews found the book to be "an emotional piece of investigative work, vitiated in places by prolixity and psychocliches." Ariel Swartley, writing for Los Angeles, concluded: "Real lives, Jentz reminds us in this carefully researched, defiantly inelegant book, are a blurry flatland."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Jentz, Terri, Strange Piece of Paradise, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 2006.

PERIODICALS

Advocate, June 6, 2006, Regina Marler, "True Confessions: Cool Queer Memoirs from a Gal Who Won the Gong Show, a Guy Who Used Porn to Chasten Bad Drivers, and a Woman Who Survived an Axman's Murder Attempt," p. 44.

Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2006, review of Strange Piece of Paradise, p. 276.

Kliatt, July, 2006, John E. Boyd, review of Strange Piece of Paradise, p. 59.

Library Journal, May 15, 2006, Lisa Nussbaum, review of Strange Piece of Paradise, p. 113.

Los Angeles, May, 2006, Ariel Swartley, review of Strange Piece of Paradise, p. 150.

Publishers Weekly, February 27, 2006, review of Strange Piece of Paradise, p. 44.