SOURCE: Kaganoff, Penny. “Susan Brownmiller.” Publishers Weekly (27 January 1989): 449–50.

In the following essay, Kaganoff discusses Brownmiller's process of research for writing Waverly Place.

As the sun sets on another eventful day in the trial of Joel Steinberg, the New York lawyer accused of beating to death his illegally adopted daughter, Lisa, PW winds down with Susan Brownmiller in Greenwich Village, the neighborhood that is the scene of that hideous crime as well as the home of the veteran journalist, who is covering the proceedings for Ms. magazine. Her essay will present an analysis of Steinberg's former live-in-lover, Hedda Nussbaum, whose experience, Brownmiller maintains, is “aberrant” vis-à-vis the typical battered woman.

“I think she is an accomplice. Most, if not all, battered women who sense their children are in danger find the courage to leave or they kill the [abusive] lover,” says the ardent feminist, whose pioneering Against Our...