SOURCE: Fortune, Marie M. Review of Waverly Place, by Susan Brownmiller. Christian Century 106, no. 13 (19 April 1989): 422–23.

In the following review, Fortune criticizes Waverly Place for failing to convey the complexities of domestic abuse.

In this book [Waverly Place] Susan Brownmiller creates a fictional version of the relationship between Joel Steinberg and Hedda Nussbaum. Through the characters Barry Kantor and Judith Winograd, Brownmiller tells the story of the brutal and abusive man who permanently disfigured Nussbaum and killed their illegally adopted daughter, Lisa. Their recently concluded trial caught the public's attention in part because it involved a middle-class professional couple living in Greenwich Village. In her version, Brownmiller reminds us that battering occurs in unexpected places.

While Waverly Place isn't a bad book, it certainly isn't a great work of fiction. It is an adequate rendering of the story, but it strangely lacks any depth of feeling. The book's only...