A Stranger in Paradise

Book excerpt: The remarkable memoir of healing and forgiveness from Julie Chimes, who survived a horrific stabbing on her own driveway In 1986, Julie Chimes allowed an emotionally distressed acquaintance to wait in her cottage for Julie's doctor boyfriend to return. Before he could, the woman - who was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and, unknown to all, had stopped taking her medication - attacked Julie with a carving knife. This book describes what happened in detail, and the long period of healing and coming to terms with the attack that followed. Julie tells of her out-of-body experiences during the crisis, as well as the dreams and premonitions leading up to it. She describes what it feels like to die, and then unforeseeably, to live to tell the tale. But most remarkably of all, she tells of her hardest journey: learning to forgive.