This Happened to Me

A Washington Post Noteworthy Book (of July and August); a Book Riot Best Nonfiction Book of Summer; one of WBUR (Boston Public Radio) 12 books to read this summer “Price not only rises above the hurt and hate, she uses her hard-won insights to shine a light for others.” —Jeannette Walls, #1 New York Times bestselling author For readers of Educated, The Glass Castle, and Know My Name comes a powerful new memoir that is a remarkable testament of survival, resilience, and trauma recovery. At once harrowing and exquisite, haunting and inspiring, Kate Price’s story will leave you with a profound assurance in the power to heal from childhood trauma and overcome generational abuse. Kate Price grew up in a small mill town in central Pennsylvania with her sister and parents in northern Appalachia. Price escaped the unbroken cycles of poverty, violence, domestic abuse, addiction, and mental illness that had plagued her family for generations. She started a new life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in pursuit of her master’s and PhD. But despite having left that dark world behind, it still kept a firm grip on her. Overcome with grief and hazy flashbacks accompanied by a “chilling of her blood and uncomfortable feeling in her bones,” Price sought out Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a trauma specialist to help heal her emotional pain through EMDR therapy. He went on to write the bestselling book, The Body Keeps the Score, which features Price’s story, as the two uncovered her past. When Price—whose brain had been protecting her by shutting out these horrific memories—felt safe enough, she and der Kolk, discovered what that darkness within her was: Her father had abused and trafficked her as a child. Price grappled with what had been revealed. Did this really happen to her? How could a parent do this to a child? A dedicated researcher, she knew she needed confirmation. And so began a ten-year quest alongside a journalist, to prove her truth. With many trips back to the hometown she thought she had left forever, the two eventually found the hard-earned evidence Price had been searching for. In this exquisitely rendered, transformative memoir, Price describes how she broke free of that which had defined her childhood and went on to create a purpose-driven life and family, on her own terms—eventually returning to the same Appalachian community to use her education and advocacy to help ensure children are given the attention, protection, and services that she never received. From victim to advocate, from fearful child to empowered adult, and from despair to triumph, This Happened to Me is a story of astonishing resilience and breathtaking determination.

Kate Price is an associate research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women, a gender-based research institute at Wellesley College. She is also a senior research scholar at the Global Association of Human Trafficking Scholars, an advisor for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s Child Sex Trafficking Expert Working Group and Global Platform for Child Exploitation Policy, and an alumni scholar at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center. An internationally recognized child sex trafficking expert and lecturer, Price’s research has influenced the passage of state-level children’s human rights legislation. Price is the recipient of a My Life, My Choice Beacon of Light Award, a Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, a Mariam K. Chamberlain Dissertation Award from the International Centers for Research on Women, and an American Association of University Women Dissertation Fellowship. She has worked extensively with trauma pioneers Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Body Keeps the Score, in which Price is featured, and Dr. Judith Herman. Price received her MA in gender/cultural studies from Simmons College and earned her PhD in sociology from the University of Massachusetts Boston. She lives in Massachusetts with her family.