The author had a chipped tooth. It ruined her looks, she thought. She had to interview someone for her book, and she really wanted to cancel. The interview subject was Mariatu Kamara, the young woman from Sierra Leone who wrote “The Bite of the Mango,” a memoir about surviving a civil war, rape, losing the baby that resulted from the rape, having her hands chopped off, making it to safety and finally leaving everyone she knew to seek refuge in Canada. The author thought about this, about why she was considering canceling and who she was about to talk to — and “shut up very quickly about my poor tooth.”

But here’s the thing: The author in question is Elizabeth Smart, the Utah woman who was kidnapped at knife point at age 14 and forced to become the “wife” of a deranged religious zealot. For nine months, she was starved, beaten and raped by this man, until she was saved by the police. The mind pingpongs wildly as Smart offhandedly tells this story of the chipped tooth and the interview in WHERE THERE’S HOPE: Healing, Moving Forward, and Never Giving Up (St. Martin’s, $26.99), one of several recent books on coping with trauma and its aftermath. Smart notes that there’s no hierarchy in the world of adversity. She’s right. And yet I couldn’t help thinking that if anyone would have been entitled to reschedule an interview with the survivor of a civil war in Sierra Leone — for any reason she wanted, including a faulty smile — that person would be Elizabeth Smart.

Smart’s first book, “My Story,” was about her ordeal. Now she’s writing about the ordeals of others — people like Breann Lasley, attacked by a stranger who climbed in her bedroom window; Norma Bastidas, who endured years of sex trafficking; and Alec Unsecker, a teenager who has spent much of his life fighting cancer. While the weaving of Smart’s own story with those of other victims is often awkward, it’s always absorbing, and along the way she provides valuable lessons about resilience, faith and the inherent power of not wanting to be pitied, even if you’re the very definition of a victim.

[To read the rest of this article by Judith Newman, click here.]

Image: Nishant Choksi