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Publisher's Review | SF Chronicle Review | San Jose Mercury Review
H O W F A L S E M E M O R Y W R E C K E D A M A N ' S L
I F E It's easy to understand why journalist Moira Johnston was reminded of the Salem witch trials when she started following the Ramona case in California's Napa Valley in the mid-90's. It's the case in which Gary Ramona, a longtime executive for Mondavi Wineries, sued his daughter's former therapists, charging they had implanted memories of incest in his daughter's mind. Ramona, who had lost his career, marriage, and home by the time the case came to court in 1994, won, more or less (the monetary award was a fraction of what he sought), and the case is considered something of a landmark in the repressed memory debate. Johnston, who sat through the seven-week trial and spent many hours interviewing the key figures in the case, seeks to use this one case to explore the whole repressed memory movement, which seemed to sweep the country early in the decade before at least some of the verdicts based on such memories were overturned. (Perhaps the best known is the George Franklin case, in which his daughter "remembered" him killing another child decades before. His conviction was eventually thrown out and his daughter was accused of perjury.) Johnston does a very good job of giving us the opposing viewpoints within the scientific community on recovered memory and repressed trauma. The only problem is that it comes fairly late in the 400-plus page book. Not surprisingly, we must first meet the family torn asumder by Holly Ramona's charges against her father. Sadly, it's not a group to much like. In many ways Gary Ramona embodied the American dream; from working his way through college to earning half a million dollars a year as director of sales and marketing for Robert Mondavi Wineries, he had worked hard and succeeded. His wife, Stephanie, and their three daughters had all that money could provide. But was Gary too busy, too demanding, too aloof? Did he force his wife to look perfect at all times? Was he controlling and domineering? Who really knows? Johnston is scrupulously fair in giving each side's viewpoint; perhaps too fair. Though it's hard not to agree with the jury that Holly's "memories" were the suggestion of a therapist, one can't help but yearn for a hero here. There aren't any. There is just the corpse of an imperfect family that is now destroyed. "Spectral Evidence" is sad if ultimately fairly compelling reading. With incest something of a cliche in comtemporary fiction (and isn't that a sad sign of the times!), this even-handed report reminds us just how spectral these memories may be. Linnea Lannon is the Free Press book editor. Reach her via Voices E-mail, voices@det-freepress.com
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