I'm Linda Holmes. This is NPR's Book of the Day. Journalist Rachel Louise Snyder might seem like an unlikely

candidate to write a memoir about light being more powerful than darkness. Her mother died when she was

young. Her father and stepmother were part of a religious community that encouraged pretty

severe corporal punishment. She was kicked out of school,

kicked out of the house. But as she tells NPR Scott Simon, she found that when she got out

into the wider world, it actually wasn't as hostile as she'd been led to believe.

In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life. Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, Sources and Methods.

NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.

Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Rachel Louise Snyder's new memoir, Women We Buried, Women We Burned, begins with a memory, or is it a vision?

She's near the equator on a ship, a semester at sea program, staring up at the sky, it appears to be perfectly split into two.

Half night, half dawn.

Let's ask the author to continue.

Science explained the celestial vision I saw that night, but memory makes it a miracle.

I wouldn't understand for years still,

but that line was a kind of beginning, a reset, a visual demarcation of my own metamorphosis.

That line is my origin story.

Rachel Louise Snyder, who as a journalist, has told stories of survival from around the world,

especially in her book on domestic violence, no visible bruises, now tells her own life story.

And she joins us now. Thanks so much for being with us.

Thank you so much for having me.

You lost your mother to cancer when you were eight.

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