A Reason to Live: The True Story of One Woman's Love, Courage and Determination to Survive

A Reason to Live: The True Story of One Woman's Love, Courage and Determination to Survive by Hills, Billy. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780970842404.

In A Reason To Live, authors Hills and Hudson step out of the bounds of traditional true crime to present the seldom told story of the plight of victims confronting the harsh reality of being victimized once by crime and then repeatedly by the American criminal justice system. A story told with the page turning readability of a novel, A Reason To Live takes readers into the lives of members of a family determined to live again on their own terms following victimization by crime. In February of 1979, two women from Pawleys Island, South Carolina, had the misfortune to cross paths with two desperate outlaws embarked on a day long, drug induced crime spree that ultimately left five persons dead. Taken at gunpoint from their families during a robbery, the women were raped, shot, and left for dead on a cold and wet dirt road. Miraculously, one of the women survived, although a shotgun blast to her face left a permanent reminder of that fateful night. A Reason To Live is the inspirational story of the survival of Wanda Summers. Just months after being brutally victimized, as Wanda and her family began the arduous process of learning to live again, Wanda summoned her courage, and, despite suffering from horrific physical and emotional pain, she stood before her assailant in court; her dramatic and heartwrenching testimony helped persuade a jury to sentence Ronald "Rusty" Woomer to death for the murder of her friend. Confident that due process of law would ultimately render justice, Wanda and her family focused on rebuilding their lives, hopeful to close the tragic chapter opened by Woomer. They had no way to know that the trial was only the beginning of their involvement with the legal system. Following years of countless appeals, and, finally, a last minute stay of execution for Woomer by the U.S. Supreme Court, Wanda faced the prospect of being dragged back into court, ten years after the original crimes, to relive the nightmarish kidnap and assault. The resulting outcry thrust Wanda into the public spotlight and a course of action that would forever change the nation.