Lauren 's Reviews > Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town

Using the town of Missoula, Montana as a microcosm, Krakauer researches and explores rape culture, misogyny, victim blaming, and college football/university politics. The book focuses on three specific cases of "sexual intercourse without consent" (as rape is legally deemed in the state of Montana) that all occurred at the University of Montana - Missoula. Two of the perpetrators were celebrated football players of the Grizzlies college football team, and all of the parties - both victims and accused perpetrators were university students. Every case involved was one of acquaintance rape - challenging the "stranger hiding in the bushes" story of rape - and while one particular case was of long-time friends, the others would be categorized as date rapes.

The stories are heartfelt, heartbreaking, and important to read and understand. The town - a "blue island" in a red state - still held many prejudices and pre-conceived notions relating to victim shaming/blaming, and each victim was harassed, and threatened - oftentimes by law enforcement, attorneys, and by the entire town (especially in the case of the football player rapists).

One of the most damning and upsetting parts to me was the utter failure on the part of the district attorney's office and the local police to take this seriously and make changes to their procedures. Krakauer follows up with some notes about the changes that have happened since these cases in 2012, but we can see that Missoula - and all of the US and the world! - still have a long way to gho.

The audiobook was particularly good - the narrator, Mozhan Marnò, plays a reporter in the Netflix show, "House of Cards" and I recognized her distinctive voice immediately. She did a great job in this production.