What would you do if you had an awkward FBI agent come to your apartment and deliver the news that the man who helped raise you and shape your general world views is really a serial killer? Kerri Rawson answers this question throughout this memoir when she is faced with the news that her father is BTK. It’s a complicated path laced with trauma, depression, repression, and ultimately confronting her PTSD. Rawson is helped on this journey with her faith journey and the love that she is shown throughout and that she gives to others. Overcoming such a realization is not an easy switch to say goodbye to everything she has ever known. Loss is complicated and can come in many forms.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. It is about a daughter’s journey aligning the father she knew with the man who committed terrible crimes, as well as her journey in processing the information that was given to her throughout the years. I imagine she is still encountering new information that she has to weave into her family’s history.

There are negative reviews complaining that this is a book that focuses too much on Rawson’s faith journey with Christianity. Faith not only is part of the title, but it seems to be a large part of how Rawson finds her way through the depression, trauma, and PTSD that she deals with throughout her life. She reinforces the up-and-down battle that is her faith journey by repeating details or biblical quotes that are important to her. Very few faith journeys are linear without hills and valleys, and Rawson’s is no different.

Equally mentioned in the title are Love and Overcoming. Rawson shares different aspects of love: familial and marital, as well as her love of animals and nature. All of these add to her healing during different stages of self-discovery and I would argue, overcoming. Some of my favorite passages are her descriptions of hiking trails in the Grand Canyon with a cousin and her father, her brother later joining the hiking party. These details help frame the duality of her father’s personality and how others reacted to him.

If you are looking for an in-depth description of the grisly murders of BTK or a psychological analysis of why he committed these crimes, this is not the book for you. And as a memoir, it doesn’t fit into nice and neat chapters that make it easy reading. The content is raw and is presented as such. This book is part of Rawson’s healing journey, helping her weave the details of a man she did not know existed within her father into the history of her family and her life. It would not have been the same book if it had been neatly edited and meticulously trimmed. The reason I give it three stars is that it is a solid book that does exactly what the title describes. I didn’t pick this book to read because I expected award-winning prose that leads to enthusiastic epiphanies. I picked this book because we don’t often hear the side of the story of a serial killer’s family and all they lose to the actions of someone they once held dear. It is an interesting viewpoint, and I thank Kerri Rawson for sharing her part of the story.

And that leaves me to a final point. There are times when Rawson questions the harm it does to her family, especially in the chapter “175 Years is a Long Time.” Some reviewers have taken that to mean that she is self-centered or not caring about the loved ones of the murdered. She does state that the prosecution asked the victims’ families’ permission to present all of the details of the crimes at the sentencing, but the prosecution doesn’t ask BTK’s family’s permission. However, later on the same page, she states “In hindsight, I understand why the prosecution—the detectives—did what they did.” Rawson realizes that her discomfort does not compare with what the victims and their families went through. A few pages later she says “After he murdered, he should have turned himself in to the police. He should have been in jail the past thirty-one years. People should still be alive. But my brother and I wouldn’t be. I was okay with that—I’d trade my life for theirs.” And that is a powerful statement in the midst of a tumultuous journey.