After hearing a couple of NPR reviews and conversations, I read Rachel Louise Snyder’s No Visible Bruises because I knew very little about the best ways to help people experiencing domestic violence. While Snyder does not purport to “know all the answers,” her empathetic and comprehensive book lays out several methods of intervention through which individuals, organizations, and society can help support victims and/or survivors. She does this by upending common “logic” about how to manage abusive interpersonal relationships, and by connecting many seemingly disparate issues to the topic of domestic violence.

The first example of the latter point is Snyder’s recounting of the many instances of mass shootings that are tied to domestic violence: the Sandy Hook shooter, the DC sniper, the man who committed the Pulse massacre, and Dylann Roof are just some of the many examples of mass murderers who started their violence at home (by either killing their mothers and/or wives, planning to do so, and/or witnessing intimate-partner violence as children.) This issue ties into many other aspects of gender equality and domestic terrorism, which I don’t think I realized beforehand.

She similarly flips the script when it comes to how abuse victims navigate relationships with their abusers in order to protect themselves and their families. As I’ll discuss later, Snyder is an incredibly talented writer, and so I’d prefer to just share a couple of the most poignant quotes on this topic below.

--Snyder on why some victims chose to align themselves with their abusers for a time period in order to ensure their safety: “Michelle Mosure stayed for her kids and for herself. She stayed for pride and she stayed for love and she stayed for fear and she stayed for cultural and social forces far beyond her control. And her staying, to anyone trained enough to see the context, looked a lot less like staying and a lot more like someone tiptoeing her way toward freedom.”

--Another flipped script is that abusers are often more subdued, less clockable people than you would expect: “One of the hallmarks of domestic violence, Adams told me, is this false idea that abusers are somehow angry generally; rather, their anger is targeted—at a partner or at the partner’s immediate family. As a result, friends and acquaintances of abusers are often surprised to hear that they committed an assault. ‘The most surprising thing is that [abusers] seem like such normal guys,’ says Adams. ‘The average batterer is pretty likable.’ For Adams this is the whole point: that we look for talons and tails, but find instead charm and affability. It’s how abusers attract victims in the first place. ‘We look for the rageaholic,’ Adams says. But only about a quarter of batterers fit that definition. What he sees, instead, is an inflexible personality.”

--This quote is followed by some hard truths about how societal values often lead to us protecting and/or siding with abusers: “The average batterer, Adams told me, ‘is more likable than his victim, because domestic violence affects victims a lot more than it affects batterers. Batterers don’t lose sleep like victims do. They don’t lose their jobs; they don’t lose their kids.’ ”

Thankfully, Snyder interviews rehabilitation program leaders that provide steps toward addressing the disparities in commonly-held interpersonal logic and societal failures at abuse detection: “Many batterers conduct some, if not most, of their nonfamilial relationships in a respectful manner, which indicates that they already know how to practice respectful treatment of others when they decide to.” Snyder, then, is positing that part of our job should not be just assuming that violent men can never be changed enough to stop violence, but working towards this change. This is perhaps the most surprising aspect of No Visible Bruises—its continuous optimism and belief that individuals and society can do better. Snyder shows countless resources and tools that can be utilized *if* we decide to pay attention to this issue as a society, and treat it with its necessary weight!

This societal change, Snyder argues, must be led by an interconnected team of victim support organizations and public service providers; this is an especially tall order in a time of fragmented government agencies, privatization or elimination of social services, and continued scrutiny about police brutality both on and off the clock. The lack of acknowledgment of the parallels between and research on police officers and domestic violence is one of this book’s few oversights. As someone who is learning more about prison abolition, it’s hard to think of carceral feminism as the most ideal solution to an issue that often affects people of color, individuals with mental health challenges, and low-income families. However, despite its flaws, the justice system is often the solution many people are met with, and so Snyder takes on the incredibly important work of interrogating real-life ways to minimize its harm. Again, I will let you hear from the author herself:

--Snyder on the need for unison to solve this crisis: “But the systems that work best, Websdale says, across the country—whether they are police, advocates, social workers, probation officers, judges, or even just family members—are those that focus on working as a team. In domestic violence, the two main entities poised at the front lines are advocates and police. Two professions with entirely different cultures: the modern feminists and the traditional patriarchy. Indeed, in my near-decade of reporting and researching domestic violence all across America, the most successful cities and towns I encountered that had either lowered their domestic violence homicide rates or increased available services all had this in common: they’d broken down the cultural barriers between their police departments and their domestic violence crisis centers.”

--Snyder explaining the need for us to “invest everywhere” in order to fully prevent domestic violence: “We cannot address homelessness without addressing the fact that domestic violence accounts for so many homeless families. We cannot successfully address educational disparity or poverty without addressing how much domestic violence can be a root cause of such problems.”

Read this if you are curious, and read this if you are concerned. I am sure everyone will find it to be useful in their own way.

P.S.: This is a weird compliment to give, but Snyder is an impeccably conscientious writer: I think this matters because parts of the story are so overwhelming, and so she knows exactly when and how to give readers breathing room for digestion and rest. Sometimes, this appears in simple turns of a phrase: splitting up the list of states without necessary preventive laws to avoid unending lists (“At the time of this writing, in 2016, Kentucky, New Jersey, South Carolina, and North Dakota did not have legislation making strangulation a felony. Neither did Ohio or Washington, D.C.”), or tempering a troubling story with smaller “fun facts” that allow readers room to match the one example of broader trends with their own personal experiences.