“Unflinching and honest…both timely and timeless” (Houston Chronicle), this remarkable collection of essays from the award-winning author of The Other Side—rooted in her very own experience with intimate assault—pursues questions that strike at the heart of our national conversation about the justness of culture.

In 2014, Lacy Johnson was giving a reading from The Other Side, her “instant classic” (Kirkus Evaluations) memoir of kidnapping and rape, whenever a female asked her what she would like to eventually about The Reckonings: Essays her rapist. This collection “attempts to parcel out several knotted problems and suggests forms of meaningful justice” (Booklist, starred evaluate). Sketching from philosophy, art, books, mythology, anthropology, film, and her own experience of assault, Johnson considers how our concepts about justice might be extended beyond vengeance and retribution to add acts of compassion, tolerance, mercy, and sophistication.

“The Reckonings isn’t a publication about changing the world. It’s school of thought in disguise, identical parts memoir, criticism, and ethics…The twelve essays deserve great consideration, while you read it and lengthy after” (NPR). From “Speak Truth to Power,” about the condition of not being believed about rape and assault; to “Goliath,” about the methods evil can be used as a kind of social control; to “The Fallout,” about ecological and generational assault, Johnson produces masterful, elaborate, gorgeously written essays that speak incisively about our current era. She grapples with justice and retribution, truth and fairness, and sexual assault and office harassment, as well as the broadest societal wrongs: the BP Essential oil Spill, authorities malfeasance, law enforcement killings. The Reckonings is certainly a powerful and necessary work, ambitious in its scope, which “challenges our culture’s expectations of justice and expose the limitations of vengeance and mercy” (Ms. Mag).