Royalties from Forever Changed will aid those survivors and family members who have contributed to this book.
Much has been written about the Oklahoma City bombing and how 168 people were killed. But news accounts often fail to put a face on the victims or to show the significance of their lives and contributions to their families and communities. Little is known about the lives of the many who survived the blast and the families of those who didn't. The tomorrows of so many ordinary people have been irreparably altered by a single act of domestic terrorism.
Three years in the making, Forever Changed is the exclusive volume that brings together eighty survivors and family members of victims. This powerful work tells the special stories of those who died, the pain endured by their families, and the ongoing struggles of the survivors a circle of grieving and hope that reaches far beyond the heartland. Original and often filled with raw emotion ranging from uplifting tenderness to bitter anger, these unique first person accounts lucidly illustrate the goodness that was lost on April 19, 1995, the legacies that remain, and the courage of all those who were affected by the bombing.
The compiler of this enduring collection is internationally recognized victim's rights advocate Marsha Kight, whose daughter, Frankie Merrell, 23, was killed in the blast. Kight, who also contributes a story, and her assistant, Lori Doggett, collected these stories and photographs from the many families in their home city and kept them in storage until the juries were chosen for the perpetrators' trials.
Forever Changed was created, Kight says, to allow the survivors and victims' families to "share their experiences as they travel this difficult journey through grief and trauma. And, by putting names, faces, and lives on the 188 who died as well as on the survivors, it is our hope that America will cease to grow callous to terrorism within our shores. It is also our hope that our experiences will be a window to our souls and a help to all who have been forced by the circumstances of life to walk this bitter path."
MARSHA KIGHT (Oklahoma City, OK) is a lecturer and director of Families and Survivors United, a victim's advocacy group. She attended nearly every day of the trials of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in Denver, CO., and has appeared on nearly every major television news program, including Larry King Live, the Today Show and World News Now to speak on behalf of victim's rights.
Approx 310 pages
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