The Jaguar Man: A Memoir

Recounting how the fourth day of a two-week vacation turned into a nightmare, Naughton (Never Fight a Shark in Open Water) takes readers on a journey through hallucination, horror, and compassion. Naughton, an experienced traveler, is in Belize hoping to start a relationship with a local man she met there on a previous trip. On her way to see him, she carelessly enters an unmarked car that the driver claims is a taxi. The innocuous sound of a door clicking shut becomes a memory she revisits for years while struggling to recover from her subsequent abduction and rape by the knife-wielding driver—the “jaguar man.” That ordeal is recounted as a mixture of imagined and remembered moments that suggest Naughton turning her consciousness off and on. When her abductor releases her the following morning, Naughton is numb and in denial over the depth of her trauma. Once back home in California, she begins the long process of recovery. Her ability to feel compassion for her abductor—who was never captured—is part of what makes her story both excruciating and extraordinary. This is a brief but riveting look at a devastating experience and the resilience Naughton summons as her ultimate response. Agent: Rayhané Sanders, Lippincott Massie McQuilkin. (July)