VOICES

I Remember Andy & Accomplice to Murder

By: Anna Jonas Fortenberry, Ken H. Fortenberry

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

This two-part nonfiction book by the award-winning, husband-wife journalism team of Anna Jonas Fortenberry and Ken H. Fortenberry is both heartbreaking and eye-opening as it examines mental illness from two unique angles.

The first part of this book – I Remember Andy - is deeply personal and was written by Anna about her brother, Andy. It details the challenging struggles her family faced for nearly a half-century as Andy fought the demons inside himself. Often, they and other family members wondered when the phone rang in the middle of the night if this would be the one telling them that Andy had gone off the deep end and had done something terrible to somebody or himself.

Shortly before his death, her dad gave her box full of letters he wrote to Andy or to people who had provided him care. The letters revealed things she had no knowledge about and enlightened her to the agony and turmoil they and Andy endured for decades as he battled paranoid schizophrenia. She had known they had agonized about him but had no clue the extent to which they suffered.

They prayed. They sought expert advice. They investigated or tried every possible cure. They even tried “tough love” to straighten Andy out, thinking at one time that maybe it was his fault for not following medical advice.

Nothing ever worked, but until their dying days in their 90s, they held out hope.

In the second part of the book - Accomplice to Murder - Ken shares shocking true stories of murder, sexual abuse, suicide and what he believes to be criminal neglect that led to the deaths of patients and the murders of innocent people. One of his job responsibilities with the South Carolina Department of Mental Health was to put a positive spin on the negative and to distort the truth by pleasing the department director and to help persuade lawmakers that the department was doing a magnificent job.

He found very little to be positive about. The veil of secrecy that was used to protect the identity of patients also was used cover up medical incompetency, indifference, insensitivity and poor management at the highest levels.

Brutally honest, Ken says he was a “paid liar.”

This book is for anyone who suffers from mental illness, families and friends of those who suffer, and for personal and professional caregivers. It is not a happily-ever-after story. It is the truth, sad, and sometimes brutally shocking.