SOURCE: Pritchard, Melissa. “Battered Lives.” Chicago Tribune Books (5 February 1989): 4.

In the following review, Pritchard praises Waverly Place as a compelling and accurate portrayal of an abusive relationship.

Behind Susan Brownmiller's fictionalized paradigm of a battered wife and fatally beaten child lie the grim, numbing statistics of a crime epidemic. In New York state, 95,000 cases of child abuse are annually reported. Ten thousand of these children suffer serious injury, 150 of them die. This year, 2,000 American children will die at the hands of one or both parents.

Waverly Place recounts, through the medium of fiction, 6-year-old Elizabeth (Lisa) Steinberg's path to violent death on November 2, 1987. Joel Steinberg, a disbarred lawyer who never actually adopted the child, this week was convicted of first-degree manslaughter after standing trial for homicide. His companion of 17 years, Hedda Nussbaum, originally was accused of acting “in concert” with Steinberg, but after charges against her were dropped...