Amanda's Voice

Book excerpt: Amanda's voice is a journey of trauma, tragedy and forgiveness. It is the story of a massacre of an entire family--with the exception of one sibling, teenager Amanda Bennett. In this book, her grandmother, Eileen Bennett, a retired newspaper reporter, relates the story of the murders in chilling detail--the May 2006 night that Amanda lost her mother, Wendy, 35; brother Scotty, 12; and sister Melanie, 6. Their husband and father, Scott, Sr., 40, had shot them as they slept before turning the gun on himself. It is through Amanda, who lives her life with the strength, dignity and forgiveness rarely seen in one so young, that the rest of the family finds hope and forgiveness. For Eileen and her husband Chick, a retired police officer, it is a journey that leads them to the New Jersey Statehouse in 2007, where they joined other victims's families, me and other anti-death penalty advocates in the successful move to abolish the death penalty in New Jersey. What could have been a story of revenge and bitterness instead tells the tale of the power of forgiveness in the human spirit.--P. [4] of cover.