Road Through Wonderland

Dawn Schiller was an associate producer and consultant on the 2003 movie Wonderland, which depicted the life of John Holmes in and around 1981. She is a member of a variety of committees -- including the President's Commission on the Status of Women and the National Center of Victims of Crime -- and she has developed a program called Throwaway Teens: Who Are They and How Can We Help?, which brings awareness to the experiences of kids targeted and groomed by predators. She lives in LaGrande, Oregon.

"Curiously enough for a book concerned with notorious pornographic film star John Holmes, there is very little emphasis on sex here. Instead, Schiller, who met Holmes in 1976 when she was just 15, details their five-year love affair, the stability he provided in the wake of her troubled childhood, and the deterioration of their relationship after Holmes became addicted to cocaine and was ultimately arrested." --Booklist "The emotions are strong throughout this well-written book and lead the reader into a world few travel and survive. I was unable to put the book down!" --Susan Murphy Milano, violence expert and author, Time's Up: A Guide on How to Leave and Survive Abuse and Stalking Relationships "Dawn Schiller manages to write so beautifully about something so shatteringly repulsive." --National Center for Victims of Crime "Gritty and starkly honest." --Mike Sager, writer at large, Esquire; author , Scary Monsters and Super Freaks "Dawn Schiller's courageous and intimately detailed memoir has given us a rare backstage glimpse at the tragic life of one man whom the porn industry used to sustain its myth-making machinery--and the havoc he wreaked in the life of a vulnerable young woman." --Dr. Jackson Katz, author, The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help "The most mesmerizing memoir since Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle ." --AOL News "[Schiller's] unflinching prose makes a gruesome story that much more compelling." -- Los Angeles Magazine "Schiller's writing is gripping, and the reader gets sucked in to this twisted tale. The story is so shocking it's hard to believe that she lived through these terrifying events. This book is hard to put down and definitely provokes the reader to want to continue to see what happens next." --Nicole Will, Portland Book Review (March 2011)