LocalLit book review: a story of hope and healing for those who have experienced violent crimes

Maureen Kincaid has earned her Doctor of Education, is currently a professor of education at North Central College in Naperville and chaired the college’s department of education from 2007 to 2017.

Kincaid is also the survivor of a violent crime. On Nov. 29, 1979, when she was just 17, Kincaid was working at a McDonald’s in Oak Forest when a burglar shot and killed her friend. Kincaid and the other workers, except two, were forced into the refrigerator and then barricaded in there. Kincaid wasn’t even scheduled to work that night but was covering the shift of a friend who couldn’t make it.

The details of that night, and the road from post-traumatic stress to healing took Kincaid 40 years. She detailed the process in her book “Miracle: The Long Journey Home.”

Here is the book’s abridged Amazon description: “’Miracle: The Long Journey Home’ is a personal narrative of tragedy and loss and one survivor’s forty-year journey from trauma and hatred to joy and love through the grace of God. As a seventeen-year-old, the author was the victim of gun violence resulting in the death of a friend and coworker when an armed assailant entered the McDonald’s restaurant at which she worked in 1979.

“The story tells of the trauma experienced by all present that night and the long journey that the author would take over forty years, leading her back to the gunman who committed the crimes and back to our Heavenly Father. Parallel to the author’s story is the gunman’s background and experience from childhood through his spiritual conversion while incarcerated.”

I’d venture to say most people have struggled at some points in our lives to forgive someone. And I can’t even imagine the struggle to do so when the “someone” has caused so much personal loss and anguish.

But that’s exactly what Kincaid does in just 52 pages. But don’t expect a Pollyanish type of process or a strategic method that borders on preachy.

In plain, concise language, Kincaid shares what happened to her. She shares the details, the fear, the aftermath. But then she shares the story of Peter G. Logan, the man who pleaded guilty and was given a life sentence without parole. We “meet” his parents, his sisters and see him as a little boy, who was known for his kindness and compassion to others.

We see him stray, follow the wrong crowd, get into trouble, become desperate. And then we reconnect with him later, after he’s served many years of time and earned an associate’s certificate in religion.

Kincaid shares with her readers what led her to reach out to Logan. And then she shares the actual correspondence between her and Logan.

In short, Kincaid takes the reader step by step from a place of trauma to learning to “manage” the trauma over the years to reconnecting with her faith to realizing that the missing piece was forgiveness. One chapter is titled “Reconnecting with the Gunman.” Those are hard words to absorb.

At 52 pages, Miracle: The Long Journey Home” is not a long read. But it is an intense read. It is the sort of book that one should read slowly, carefully, perhaps a chapter a time.

People who remember the Oak Forest incident might enjoy flipping through this book. But the target readers, in my opinion, are not the curious. The target readers are those people who are struggling to grant forgiveness to someone, as well as for people who have already triumphed in that regard.

For the former will learn firsthand through the example of one who finally arrived at a place of forgiveness. And the latter will surely share in Kincaid’s joy of, not only finding healing at last, but the spiritual connection she developed with the most unlikely person in her life.

That’s grace. That’s God.

Buy “Miracle: The Long Journey Home” on Amazon.

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Contact Denise M. Baran-Unland at 815-280-4122 or dunland@shawmedia.com.