You'll Never Find Us: A Memoir

by Jeanne Baker Guy

Overview

In 1977, Jeanne’s German nationalist ex-husband, Klaus, tells her he’s gotten a new job and wants to take their three-year-old daughter and six-year-old son away for a long weekend to celebrate. Jeanne relents. But Klaus never returns and instead sends Jeanne a letter, delivered by a mutual friend, in which he declares that he has fled to Germany and she will never see him, or her children, again.

The next four months are filled with agony, despair, and anger as Jeanne seeks legal support but quickly learns that federal parental kidnapping laws will offer her little help. She reflects on her tumultuous ten-year marriage to Klaus and the unsettling events that followed their divorce. A product of the patriarchal culture of the 1950s, Jeanne’s nice-girl mentality is being tested and reshaped by the feminist movement of the 1970s, and she finds that the kidnapping ultimately becomes a doorway to unexpected strength.

You’ll Never Find Us is the story of a young mother coming into her own power, regardless of past mistakes, bad judgment, and fears; the story of a woman who realizes she must tap into her newfound resilience and courage to find her stolen children—and steal them back.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781647421557
Publisher:	She Writes Press
Publication date:	08/17/2021
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jeanne Baker Guy of Jeanne Guy Gatherings is an author, speaker, and journal-writing coach. (Her first name is pronounced Genie, though she is without magical powers.) Born and raised in Indiana, she received her bachelor’s degree in English lit/drama from Indiana University. After a twenty-five-year career in office management and business development, she found her calling in facilitating personal growth circles. Years of blogs, filled with her irreverent humor, serve as the basis for her classes and her 2015 book Seeing Me: A Guide for Reframing the Way You See Yourself Through Reflective Writing, coauthored with photographer David Rackley. Mother of three grown and married children, Jeanne lives in Cedar Park, Texas, with her retired architect–husband Robert and their two spoiled feral cats. You’ll Never Find Us is her first memoir.

Table of Contents

Two interwoven story lines, each told chronologically

1 Day 0 1

2 Wrong Fairytale, Wrong Man 4

3 DAY 0 Continued 6

4 College 13

5 DAY 1 20

6 Love Story 28

7 DAY 3 32

8 Sorority vs. GDI 44

9 DAY 9 47

10 And They Wed 53

11 DAY 21 63

12 Newlyweds 66

13 DAY 26 71

14 Porn 76

15 DAY 30 & 31 80

16 Birthing Takes Time 91

17 DAY 42 95

18 Birth 99

19 DAY 45 106

20 A Different Path 110

21 DAY 47 114

22 Separation 116

23 DAY 51 120

24 The Partial Woman 125

25 DAY 54 131

26 Accidents 133

27 DAY 59 138

28 Terminated 141

29 DAY 60, 61, & 62 144

30 A Room of One's Own 148

31 DAY 76 152

32 DAY 80 153

33 DAY 91 155

34 Manthey v. Manthey 157

35 Haywood and the Kids 172

36 Chaos 174

37 Tripping 184

38 Breaks and Break-ins 190

39 Games 200

40 In Sickness and in Health 207

41 Everything Changes 216

42 DAY 101 223

43 DAY 107 226

44 DAY 108, 109, & 110 229

45 DAY 113 232

46 DAY 115 234

47 DAY 116 & 117 237

48 DAY 118 242

49 DAY 119 246

50 Safe 256

51 Aftermath 258

52 Postscript: He Dies 261

Epilogue 264

Acknowledgments 267

Editorial Reviews

2022 Sarton Awards Finalist in Memoir
2022 Readers’ Favorite Book Awards Folio Literary Management Winner
2022 Readers’ Favorite Book Awards Silver Medal Winner in Non-Fiction (Memoir)
2022 16th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards Winner in Memoir
2022 IPPY Awards Silver Winner in Autobiography III (Personal Struggle/Health Issues)
2022 Eric Hoffer da Vinci Eye Book Awards Winner
2021 Foreword INDIES Finalist in Autobiography & Memoir

“This is a book about courage. Any parent’s nightmare is to have their children disappear. It is even worse to learn the captor is the other parent. A story told with intensity and love.”
—DAN RATHER, journalist and author of What Unites Us

“Baker Guy writes with honest and heart-wrenching emotional detail . . . A moving account of a nightmarish family drama.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS

“Overall, You’ll Never Find Us is an astonishing and personal tale about the hidden power of refusing to accept mistreatment.”
—READERS’ FAVORITE, 5-star review

“Do I recommend this book? Wholeheartedly. You will laugh, cry, be angry, and then cry some more. That’s okay because you’ll emerge feeling stronger. If Jeanne can face this horrific situation and live to write about it, then maybe it’s possible for each of us to face our own personal demons.”
—LEN LEATHERWOOD, President of Story Circle Network

“Jeanne Baker Guy’s You’ll Never Find Us moves us through shock and outrage to courage and determination, past gendered obstacle after gendered obstacle, past villains and equally guilty bystanders, to a triumph that should never be necessary—a victory over intimate violence of the worst kind. This is a book that will break your heart. And then repair it stronger than ever.”
—RICHARD HOFFMAN, author of Half the House and Love & Fury

“Through her powerful and authentic storytelling, we watch Jeanne Baker Guy grow up from a compliant young wife and mother into a woman to be reckoned with through a powerful and timeless transformation of the human spirit.”
—CHRISTINA BALDWIN, author of Storycatcher and Life’s Companion: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Practice

“A universal story of a young mother coming into her own power, regardless of past mistakes, bad judgment, and fears. An emotionally gripping heroine’s tale, one too many will relate to.”
—SARAH BIRD, author of Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen and the forthcoming Last Dance on the Starlight Pier

“A compelling read. This is a deeply moving story of a mother’s love, dedication, fortitude, and courage in the face of overwhelming odds. You feel you are next to her in her determined quest to bring her children back.”
—RICHARD A. ZANSITIS, Vice President and General Counsel, Rice University

“Absolutely gobsmacking and very well written. Jeanne’s story is brutally honest, tense, and full of courage. It had me spellbound.”
—ANN LINNEA, author of Deep Water Passage: A Spiritual Journey at Midlife and Keepers of the Trees: A Guide to the Re-Greening of North America

From the Publisher

2021-08-23
A mother finds new strength in order to find her abducted children in this memoir.

As a young girl, when Baker Guy thought about her future, she, like many other women who grew up in the 1950s, believed that “a man was the most important thing in a woman’s life” and had faith in the “whole fairytale” of romance and marriage. When, as a freshman in college, she met Klaus, a dashing German graduate student, he initially seemed like her dream man. During their courtship, she chose to ignore serious warning signs, including Klaus’ intolerance of racial diversity, and they eventually married and had two children. By the time the kids reached the ages of 4 and 2, the marriage collapsed and a nightmare began. In this memoir, Baker Guy tells of the harrowing “four months…seventeen weeks…119 days…2,856 hours” she spent searching for her children, whom her ex-husband kidnapped in 1977. Chapters alternate between the events surrounding the abduction and flashbacks to the beginning of her turbulent relationship with Klaus. Along the way, Baker Guy explains how little recourse she had, as, at the time, “Klaus had broken no law.” To her horror, the authorities considered the situation a mere “domestic dispute”; even the FBI wouldn’t touch the case, because “naming a parent as kidnapper under these circumstances [was] all but unheard of in 1977.” Nevertheless, she knew she’d stop at nothing until she found her children. Baker Guy writes with honest and heart-wrenching emotional detail as she describes her abusive relationship, in which their marriage bed was like “a battlefield.” She also ably gets across the excruciating pain of missing her two kids: “My voice quivered as I thought of the last glimpse I’d had of Ty and Megan, smiling, excited, waving goodbye through the car windows….Had I told them I loved them?” Overall, this remembrance is not only a gripping account of these terrifying events, but also an effective chronicle of legal hurdles women faced during the latter half of the 20th century.

A moving account of a nightmarish family drama.

Kirkus Reviews