Surviving One’s Saviors (Utsatt)

Markus Lutteman

Twelve year old Ester Jansson was lying in her bed with the cover pulled up tight to her chin crying silently. She could barely understand what had just happened. The whispering voices, the heavy bodies, that hard thing between her thighs.

 

It was Magnus and Dan, two of the family’s teenage foster sons, who had sneaked into her room. They had been naked, and they had gotten into her bed. She hadn’t dared to scream.

 

Ester’s brain was a trembling mess of confused thoughts. She wanted to get away from everything. She didn’t fit in here, and she did not want to fit in. Everyone thought she should be grateful for getting the chance to come to Sweden, but what was this to be grateful about? For the fact that she was bullied at school for the color of her skin? For the fact that the family’s foster children sexually abused her? Or for the fact that her adoptive mother thought she could heal her, but only made her more ill?

 

She looked out at the night sky outside the window and saw the star she had made to her own. She could talk to her African mother through that star. She thought of her all the time. She wondered if the mother missed her daughter, and she wondered why she had put her up for adoption.

Her mother hadn’t. The adoption had been arranged against her will. And she was determined that she would see her daughter again someday.

 

Surviving One’s Saviors is based on a true story about an adoptive child’s struggle for an identity she can call her own, about the Swedish society’s swing in opinion in the way to look at adoptions and about two women’s untiring ambition to reunite.

 

390 pages

 

Rights sold

Sweden: Norstedts

 

Reviews

"Ester’s destiny is touching and there is something deeply human to reflect over. A mother is forced to give up her daughter, and she spends a lifetime regretting it. Gradually the two are brought closer and closer to each other."
Helsingborgs Dagblad

 

"At times, it is poignant. Ester’s destiny touches regardless if it is about her misfortunes or her brighter moments, as when she is reunited with her Ethiopian mother. /…/ But the book’s biggest virtue is that it puts Este’s life into a bigger context. Lutteman has done his homework. About the conflict on the Horn of Africa, about the Pentecostal movement, about attachment theory, and about adoptions."
Östgöta Correspondenten

"Empathetic portrayal of a survivor. /.../ Surviving One’s Saviors is a scathing criticism of the Pentecostal Church and with the whole of the adoption system of the time. /.../ Markus Lutteman has portrayed the story of Esther's life with much empathy and with only a few sentimental parts. He also gives her the last word: "I'm a survivor". The source references at the end of the book shows that Lutteman has worked with a researcher's accuracy."
Svenska Dagbladet

"By an impressive research Lutteman paints a background and a broad context in which he puts Ester. He describes the conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia, the West's colonial and racist colored relationship to the African continent. These conditions persists on the personal level for Ester in Sweden, where she sometimes feels like a second-class citizens, and not as loved as the biological children in the family. All this makes the book become something more than just a story about an adopted child and the search for her roots, which by now feels familiar by television programs like Whithout a trace. /…/ Despite all the horrible things, this is not a pitch-dark story. Ester’s life is also about having a strong charisma, desire and longing for answers that ultimately deliver results. The story fascinates at the same time as it is both painful and causes anger."
Borås Tidning