SF Chronicle Review | San Jose Mercury Review | FMSF Review Kirkus Review | Detriot Free Press P U B L I S H E R S  R E V I E W With SPECTRAL EVIDENCE, we have at last the definitive report on the "recovered memory wars" that have raged through America's families, psychotherapy. feminism, memory science, and the courts for most ot the decade-the must-read book that will be an influential voice as the wars climax now in decisive legal and scientific banles. Here is the story of a "perfect tamily destroyed when daughter Holly's "flashbacks" of rape by her father turned to accusations and lawsuits-and at the landmark trial in Napa Valley that turned the tide of the wars. Until Holly's accusations brought him down, Gary Ramona had been a brilliantly successful winery executive in Napa Valley, the "adopted son" of the valley's most famous winemaker, Robert Mondavi . The explosive trial gave a father, for the first time, the right to strike back at the therapists he believed had planted false memories of sexual abuse in his daughters mind--and to rigorously test the science and myths of memory. In one of the most riveting courtroom dramas of the decade, the jury found the memories false and the therapists guilty of malpractice-a verdict that triggered reform of errant therapists grown rich on recovered memories, sped a return to reason and justice after a decade of hysteria and witch-hunts-and shifted focus again to the family. For in replacing "survivor" rhetoric and psuedoscience with informed skepticism and facts, the Ramona trial defused the memory wars' destructive passions and helped turn the nation toward the truly urgent issue: the horror of real child abuse, and the tragedy of the abandoned children of privilege whose desperation erupted, too often, into fantasies of incest. Weaving the intimate Ramona story into the broader web of social controversy. award-winning author/journalist Moira Johnston has told a story of the troubled American family that will move the heart as it stirs the mind and conscience. Poignantly contrasting Napa Valley's glamorous feasts with Holly's emotional hungers, SPECTRAL EVIDENCE will haunt our empty dinner tables for a long time to come.
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