Following the acclaimed No Visible Bruises, a piercing account of the author’s childhood in an evangelical Christian community, her teenage escape, and her career as a reporter at the frontline of the global epidemic of violence against women. 

Award-winning journalist Rachel Louise Snyder has spent her career reporting on abuse that happens under the cover of ‘private life’. And yet the story of her own troubled family is one she has always kept locked away. 

Snyder was eight when her mother died, and her distraught father thrust the family into an evangelical, cult-like existence halfway across the country. Furiously rebellious against this life, she was expelled from school, and then from home. Living out of her car and relying on strangers, she soon found herself masquerading as an adult, talking her way into college, and eventually travelling the globe. In places like India, Tibet, and Niger, she interviewed those who had been through the unimaginable. In Cambodia, where she lived for six years, she watched a country reckon with the horrors of its own recent history. 

Written with a storyteller’s gift for immediacy, and weaving the personal with the universal, Women We Buried, Women We Burned is a necessary story of family struggle, female survival, and the passionate drive to bear witness.

"

‘Snyder’s most recent book, No Visible Bruises, explored the psychological entanglements of domestic violence. This offering once again considers complex relationships, but at a personal level … searingly honest and moving.’

"

‘An affecting memoir … Excellent writing and a clear perspective enhance this primer on how to hope.’

"

‘[A] gripping memoir … Snyder’s curiosity is matched by her own resilience; writing stories about survivors parallels her own story of overcoming trauma and finding grace.’

"

‘A penetrating memoir on grief and redemption … Snyder delivers her inspiring story with lyrical prose and sharp insights, particularly about the fraught father-daughter relationship at its centre. It’s an eloquent portrayal of the power of forgiveness.’

"

‘Inspirational … Snyder observes the world with both an unsparing eye and a generous spirit … Instead of getting trapped in the familiar impasse of either/or, Snyder thinks in terms of ands. This expansiveness is of a piece with her writing on domestic violence … Snyder’s memoir shows how one might — must — live amid multiple truths.’

"

‘Women We Burned is written with precision and intention. It is affecting but, crucially, never sentimental — and full of hard-won hope.’

"

‘The author of No Visible Bruises writes a searing memoir telling the story of her triumph over impossible odds, from her mother’s early death, expulsion from school and homelessness to her global reporting on domestic violence.’

"

‘Snyder’s memoir is as heartbreaking, wrenching and compelling as the stories of the victims in her eye-opening book on domestic violence … In explaining her own history, Snyder shows why she was drawn to the darkest stories and how she is able to retell them with such detail and compassion … The violence and neglect of her adolescence sounds nearly unsurvivable. And yet she is here, proof that there can be healing, reconciliation and professional triumph.’

"

‘Rachel Louise Snyder’s two most recent books are like pendant portraits, each complementing and illuminating the other, a literary matched set. In No Visible Bruises, Snyder probed the pathology and sociology of intimate partner violence … Women We Buried, Women We Burned, an engrossing memoir of her own troubled, motherless early life, helps explain both her attraction to that dark subject and her appreciation of its complexity. [Snyder’s] difficult past, with all its emotional complexities, becomes an asset. It renders her unafraid to explore the grittier aspects of human nature … moving.’

"

‘For fans of Tara Westover’s Educated, Snyder provides a triumphant story of beating the odds and of radical self-definition — with a punk rock backdrop to boot.’

"

‘[Snyder’s] background as a journalist shines through as she describes her experiences honestly but without added drama or artifice, instead letting the people and events speak for themselves. This results in a narrative whose style belies its depth, for even as Rachel recounts her own maturation as a woman and a writer, she’s also commenting obliquely on how trauma is recapitulated and the countless ways in which male authority warps and erases women’s stories and lived realities. How she undertakes this work is subtle, even crafty.’