The Cleveland Abductions, Kidnapping, & Sebold's The Lovely Bones

From yesterday's BBC article "Ariel Castro faces rape and kidnap charges in Ohio case:"

The owner of the Ohio house from which three women were rescued this week a decade after they went missing has been charged with kidnapping and rape, US prosecutors have said. Ariel Castro, 52, will appear in court on Thursday. His brothers Pedro, 54, and Onil, 50, will not be charged.

Amanda Berry, 27, Gina DeJesus, 23, and Michelle Knight, 32, were found in the Cleveland house on Monday. Cleveland's police chief has said the women were bound with ropes and chains.

In a news conference on Wednesday afternoon, authorities said Mr Castro would be charged with four counts of kidnapping, covering the three victims and Ms Berry's six-year-old daughter Jocelyn, alleged to have been born in captivity. Mr Castro was also charged with one count of rape against each woman.

For a novel about kidnapping and what it puts a family through, try The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold:

The Lovely Bones is the story of a family devastated by a gruesome murder -- a murder recounted by the teenage victim...

The details of the crime are laid out in the first few pages... Susie Salmon describes how she was confronted by the murderer one December afternoon on her way home from school. Lured into an underground hiding place, she was raped and killed. But what the reader knows, her family does not. Anxiously, we keep vigil with Susie, aching for her grieving family, desperate for the killer to be found and punished.

Another novel about a kidnapping is Room by Emma Donoghue. I didn't like this book -- the five-year-old narrator drove me up the wall -- but many other readers enjoyed it and it features a child born to a kidnapped woman and their escape from the kidnapper. Here's the summary:

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work. T

old entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.