Notice of Release: A Daughter's Journey to Forgive her Mother's Killer

by Stephanie Cassatly

Overview

"Stephanie Cassatly's redemptive memoir is a great gift to humanity."

--Marina Catacuzino,
Founder of The Forgiveness Project

When Stephanie Cassatly was eighteen years old, her mother was shot and killed in a convenience store robbery in New Orleans, changing every preconceived notion she had about the world and what it meant to feel safe. Twenty years later, she found her mother's killer and forgave him, just before he died in the notorious Angola State Penitentiary. It was then that she realized she had been as much of a prisoner as he had been.

With searing honesty that will make readers' hearts both ache and sing, Notice of Release chronicles her traumatic and at times dangerous childhood as an expatriate in South America, her shift from grieving college student to high-powered ad-executive, and how she reconciled her deep connection to her own children with her fear of being taken prematurely from them. In this memoir, she proves that shedding the weight of the past can unlock a brave and beautiful future, and comes to see that finding and forgiving her mother's killer is ultimately a journey to find herself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632132888
Publisher:	Untreed Reads Publishing
Publication date:	04/21/2017
Pages:	246
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

STEPHANIE CASSATLY earned her undergraduate degree in Business from Emory University and her MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has been published in literary journals and anthologies, and many of those works have won awards and notable mentions. She speaks on the topic of forgiveness, is a contributor to The Forgiveness Project, and teaches writing at Palm Beach Atlantic University. She resides in Florida with her husband. They have two grown daughters.

Editorial Reviews

Stephanie Cassatly's redemptive memoir is a great gift to humanity.Chronicling her mother's life and death and the progression of her own forgiving heart, the book moves from capsizing grief to a place of hope, healing and strength. This compelling transformative narrative is important reading for anyone seeking to make meaning out of trauma, deal with unresolved pain or simply better understand the healing power of forgiveness.

Marina Catacuzino, founder of The Forgiveness Project

Notice of Release explores the boundaries of grief—and, just as importantly, forgiveness—ultimately finding common ground between the two. Cassatly untangles the threads of the actions of the man who killed her mother, revealing connections to family dynamics, culture, class, and identity. Any good book about death is a memento mori, reminding the reader about the nature of mortality. Notice of Release combines the certainty of death with the uncertainty of forgiveness. Cassatly travels a great emotional distance to find empathy, and her journey is all the more powerful for that. This is a beautiful, very human book.

—Sue William Silverman Author, The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew

Who can ever be prepared for a no-cause/no-reason murder of a mother (or anyone, for that matter)? The thought makes reason stare. But Stephanie Cassatly takes her reader, step-by-step, through the painful process of forgiveness. In doing so, she opens the door for those wanting to enlarge their understanding and, maybe, their heart.

—Phyllis Barber, Author of To The Mountain

From the Publisher