Visiting Hours: A Memoir of Friendship & Murder

Visiting Hours: A Memoir of Friendship & Murder

Written by: Amy Butcher 

Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller

Published April 7, 2015

Listening time: 6 hours, 57 minutes 

My review: 3.5 out of 5 stars 

With echoes of Darin Strauss' Half a Life and Cheryl Strayed's Wild comes a beautifully written, riveting memoir that examines the complexities of friendship in the aftermath of a tragedy.


Four weeks before their college graduation, 21-year-old Kevin Schaeffer walked Amy Butcher to her home in their college town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Hours after parting ways with Amy, he fatally stabbed his ex-girlfriend, Emily Silverstein. While he awaited trial, psychiatrists concluded he had suffered an acute psychotic break. Amy was severely affected by Kevin's crime but remained devoted to him as a friend. Over time she became obsessed - determined to discover the narrative that explained what Kevin had done, believing that Kevin's actions were the direct result of his untreated illness.

The tragedy deeply shook her concept of reality, disrupted her sense of right and wrong, and dismantled every conceivable notion she'd established about herself and her relation to the world. Amy eventually realized she'd never have the answers or find personal peace unless she went after them herself. She drove across the country, back to Gettysburg for the first time in the three years since graduation, to sift through hundreds of pages of public records - mental health evaluations, detectives' notes, inventories of evidence, search warrants, testimonies, even Kevin's own confession.

This is Amy Butcher's deeply personal, heart-wrenching account of the consequences of failing her friend when perhaps he needed one most. It's the story of how trauma affects memory and the way a friendship changes and often strengthens through seemingly insurmountable challenges. Ultimately it's a powerful testament to the bonds we share with others and the profound resiliency and strength of the human spirit.

This one was different then I was expecting. It is not only the story of a girl dealing with the aftermath of her friend killing someone, but her dealing with the idea of being friends with a murderer. It isn't something many of us think about, what we would do if someone we loved committed an unspeakable crime like murder... but Amy has to do just that when her college friend Kevin stabs his then girlfriend to death. This book is her reflection of how she dealt with the trauma of that night and how she felt like she failed him when maybe he needed her most... I think we all wonder what we could have done differently when bad things happen. This would be no exception. I found it really interesting to hear the facts about mental health and violence. Though I knew many of them, hearing them aloud in this context is always shocking, heartbreaking because we allow this to happen with the limits we place on access to mental health resources.