The names have been changed to protect the innocent — and the guilty — in this non-fiction memoir by Stuart Nagero. As a small child in India, Nagero’s wife, Vidhi, suffered seven years of brutal physical, sexual and mental abuse at the hands of her adult cousin, Varun. As Nagero makes explicit in the title, Truth is Indestructible is a husband’s reaction to learning of this part of his wife’s history.

This short book of only 52 pages focuses almost exclusively on the author’s reaction to learning of his wife’s trauma and his philosophical musings about the nature of evil and social reform. He tells Vidhi’s story in outline only. There are few gory details of exactly what Varun did to her, apart from a couple of examples of his depravity. Instead, we are told that when her family fell into poverty, Vidhi and her mother were placed by her absentee father with extended family. In this family, Vidhi became the “sexual target” and “punching bag” for a violent, psychopathic man seventeen years her senior.

When at last Vidhi confesses her history, she and Nagero seek justice, but there is no justice to be had. The police are not interested in such an old crime, and the family covers up and denies everything to save social face.

In a bid for a kind of healing, Nagero seeks to give a voice to the millions of other silent victims. He holds up Varun as just one example of an evil that infests the world, taking the specific instance of Vidhi’s experience and extrapolating that to comment on the human condition and society as a whole in which “evil individuals take advantage of the power and social taboos to protect them.”

Nagero is knowledgeable and articulate; through his novel, he provides a voice for his wife and other abuse victims. This memoir is a good read for those that want to know they are not alone, and that there is hope for the future.

Pages: 67 | ASIN : B09YT1MW5L