My Story by Chris Stewart

My Story by Chris Stewart

For the first time, ten years after her abduction from her Salt Lake City bedroom, Elizabeth Smart reveals how she survived and the secret to forging a new life in the wake of a brutal crime

On June 5, 2002, fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Smart, the daughter of a close-knit Mormon family, was taken from her home in the middle of the night by religious fanatic, Brian David Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee. She was kept chained, dressed in disguise, repeatedly raped, and told she and her family would be killed if she tried to escape. After her rescue on March 12, 2003, she rejoined her family and worked to pick up the pieces of her life.
Now for the first time, in her memoir, MY STORY, she tells of the constant fear she endured every hour, her courageous determination to maintain hope, and how she devised a plan to manipulate her captors and convinced them to return to Utah, where she was rescued minutes after arriving. Smart explains how her faith helped her stay sane in the midst of a nightmare and how she found the strength to confront her captors at their trial and see that justice was served.
In the nine years after her rescue, Smart transformed from victim to advocate, traveling the country and working to educate, inspire and foster change. She has created a foundation to help prevent crimes against children and is a frequent public speaker. In 2012, she married Matthew Gilmour, whom she met doing mission work in Paris for her church, in a fairy tale wedding that made the cover of People magazine.

Elizabeth Smart was born in 1913 in Ottawa, Canada. She attended private schools in Canada and studied at King's College, University of London, for a year. She came upon a slim volume of poetry by George Barker while browsing in a London bookshop and fell passionately in love with him through the printed word. They eventually spoke personally, and Elizabeth Smart flew Barker and his wife to the United States as a result of Barker's financial difficulties. Thus started one of history's most spectacular, passionate, and ultimately tragic love stories.

Their relationship gave the ardent inspiration for one of the most affecting and immediate chronicles of a love affair ever written--By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. They never married, but Elizabeth bore George Barker four children, and their relationship offered the impassioned inspiration for one of the most poignant and immediate chronicles of a love affair ever written--By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. This amazing poem, first published in 1945, is now universally recognized as a classic work of poetic language, retaining all of its searing poignancy, beauty, and power of effect. Elizabeth Smart supported herself and her family after the war by working in journalism and advertising. She joined Queen magazine as literary and associate editor in 1963, but then withdrew out of the literary scene to live peacefully in a rural region of Suffolk.

In 1986, Elizabeth Smart passed away.