Book Review: No Stones: Women Redeemed from Sexual Addiction By Marnie C. Ferree (InterVarsity, 2010) -- By: Margaret English de Alminana

Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 25:3 (Summer 2011)
Article: Book Review: No Stones: Women Redeemed from Sexual Addiction By Marnie C. Ferree (InterVarsity, 2010)
Author: Margaret English de Alminana


Book Review: No Stones: Women Redeemed from Sexual Addiction
By Marnie C. Ferree (InterVarsity, 2010)

Reviewed by

Margaret English de Alminana

Margaret English de Alminana works as graduate program coordinator at Southeastern University, Lakeland, Florida, where she also serves as an adjunct professor of theology and ethics. She is completing a PhD in theology at the University of Wales/Glyndwr. Formerly senior chaplain of women at Orange County Florida’s Female Detention Center, she also developed an outreach ministry to merchandised and at-risk women in Orlando’s red-light district. Margaret has written numerous books and articles, most recently Removing the Veil (Bridge-Logos, 2008).

Marnie Ferree presents a deeply moving and sometimes disturbing investigation of sexual abuse from the perspective of the injured, as one who was deeply wounded through sexual victimization, and the healer, as an actively working counselor and minister to those who have experienced similar abuse. And, as if such revelatory investigations from the first-person perspective were not difficult enough, Ferree takes the discussion to an entirely new depth of difficulty: she presents herself as the perpetrator as well.

Those who might benefit from this tangled complication of wounds and wounding, hurt and healing, through the investigation of these diversely difficult and painful perspectives are others who have been similarly wounded, as well as other healers. These are the brave souls who dive into the depths of human darkness in order to provide some much-needed restoration and relief.

Part 1 begins with an exposé of the secret sin of sexual addiction. In her introduction to the subject, Ferree informs the reader that she, as a once-divorced and remarried woman, received a diagnosis of cervical cancer caused by a sexually transmitted disease. The event forced this wife and mother of two young children to admit that she’d been a sex addict since the age of fourteen—a sex addict involved in a long chain of illicit, adulterous affairs. Ferree paints a picture of her spouse as a good and loving husband who was completely unaware of this circumstance, victimized by the infidelity, and bruised by the revelation.

Ferree began a journey of self-discovery that eventually led to a better understanding of herself as a sex addict, a pathway that would eventually permit enough healing in her life to allow her to bring healing into the lives of others. She unravels for the reader a painful story of sexual abuse and emotional abandonment by her father, a pastor who never remarried following her mother’s death early in her life. Instead of ministering to his young daughter’s needs, he shut himself off in increasing isolatio...

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