When Doris Brown’s life was taken by a brutal killer in 1974, her story was too.
It became diminished, reduced to that of a victim of violent crime; focus pulled instead to the sensational tale of a serial killer and those who caught him.
But now, her youngest daughter Colleen Brown is reclaiming her story with her new memoir, If you lie down in a field, she will find you there.
The book, scheduled for release in October by Radiant Press, offers a glimpse into the life of Doris Brown and her family through a series of stories, memories, conversations and reflections.
We see her in her Guelph home, in their cottage, in the family store. We see her adjusting to the post-war era with her new husband, and later going through a divorce.
We see how she cared for her children, how she loved animals, how she could be stubborn when something was important to her.
“(My mother) was completely overshadowed by this, this spectacle of her death. She’s not remembered publicly, she’s not remembered as a living person at all. She’s remembered as the victim of a crime,” Brown said.
“A murder … makes for a great story. And we know that from turning around on television every single night. But the murder is not about the murder victims. Murder is about the case afterwards, all of the people involved in the case,” she said.
That desire to tell her story was a big motivation for writing the book. Put simply, the book portrays what it’s like to remember her.
When Doris died in Guelph in 1974, it was presumed to be because of a heart attack.
But two years later, Russell Maurice Johnson, known as The Bedroom Strangler, confessed to her murder. Johnson was found not criminally responsible for the murders on account of mental disorder. He was committed to a maximum security mental institution, where he’s remained since 1978.
Brown, the youngest of five children, was only eight at the time. Because of this, her memories of her mother are fragmented, and largely made up of second-hand stories passed down from other family members.
“I didn’t fabricate a new story for my mother. It’s not that revealing about her. It’s a record of the experience of attempting to remember her.”
There are three main essays in the book, one about second-wave feminism, one about the economy of small towns (specifically Guelph in the 1970s), and one about the justice system in her mother’s perpetually-open case.
The three narrative themes were chosen since when she was younger, adults would often reach for those themes when trying to help her understand her mother, how to place her in the broader world.
“It’s really a representation of my experience,” she said.
A core part of the book was also written by her sister, Laura, borrowed from an essay she wrote more than 20 years ago, providing a more “straightforward timeline.”
She used interviews, spoken family anecdotes from her brothers and sisters; the narrative moves seamlessly from one voice to the next, in a collective memory of their mother, offering an authentic experience of what it was like for Brown to piece together who her mom was.
Those stories often begin with intimate and familiar phrases like “do you remember that time?”
The phrases and stories that follow are common in families for stories they like to tell, she said.
“They're brought up at family dinners, or when you're meeting somebody new, this is a story that’s important about you and your family. They're often funny. And so are, those stories are not that different from anybody else's family stories.”
Many of the memories shared are also fragmented, which she said was really the only way to tell the story, given her own experience.
“I found a structure that authentically represented the experience, not the other way around. My memories of my mother are fragmented, and so the text is fragmented. That allows me to offer the reader an authentic mirroring of my own experience.”
That structure demonstrates how the construction and memory of a person is a shared experience, she said. That includes how a person fits into bigger narratives, like feminism.
“We fit ourselves and our understanding of others, in part, into these larger narratives,” she said. “To understand her, I also need to place her in history.
“Having written the book, I can imagine my mother being a complete, full person having a full life,” she said.
