A compassionate look at 42 battered women who felt locked in with danger and so desperate that they killed a man they loved; scholarly and compelling.

Angela Browne, Ph.D. is a social and forensic psychologist on the faculty of the department of psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Setting the stage; childhood roots of violence; courtship and early marriage - from affection to assault; typical violence; the psychology of intimate relating - differences in women and men; the outer limits of violence; fear and the perception of alternatives; even unto death; the legal system and battered women; summing up - disposition of cases discussed in the text.