AUTHOR RETURNS AGAIN TO SCENE OF THE CRIME.

Byline: Jeff Wright The Register-Guard

Though she lives in Los Angeles, screenwriter Terri Jentz can't seem to resist coming back again and again to Oregon, the "Strange Piece of Paradise" that is the title of her buzz-generating book.

"I think I now have more friends in Oregon than I do from anywhere," Jentz marveled Monday while lunching at a restaurant in downtown Eugene. After recent book readings in Hood River and Bend, she was in Eugene in part to reunite with a new friend she made at a book reading here in May.

Jentz made her first visit to Oregon in 1977 as a 19-year-old Yale college student, intent on crossing the country by bicycle. She and a college roommate began their trek in Astoria and reached Eugene by their fifth day.

On Day Seven, they pedaled up McKenzie Pass and, elated but exhausted by the mountain climb, put up their tent at Cline Falls State Park near Redmond. That night, a man in a pickup truck deliberately ran over them, then attacked them with an ax. The two women miraculously but barely survived.

The horrific crime was reported in newspapers across the country - including an eight-paragraph account on the front page of the next day's Register-Guard. What the newspapers ultimately failed to report, however, is that the crime was never solved and a perpetrator never identified - until Jentz began her own unofficial investigation about 15 years later.

The subtitle of Jentz's book describes the psychological need that pushed her to come back many times to Oregon, beginning in 1992: "A Return to the American West to Investigate My Attempted Murder - and Solve the Riddle of Myself."

The book, a compelling hybrid of personal memoir and true crime drama, has garnered substantial critical attention, from the cover of the New York Times Review of Books to television segments on CNN and "Primetime." Jentz's publisher won't identify sales figures, but says the book enjoyed a "significant six-figure initial printing" and will be published in paperback next spring.

Local readers can find several Eugene references sprinkled throughout the book: Jentz spending time researching the records of possible suspects at the Lane County Courthouse, sharing her emerging suspicions with a Register-Guard reporter, and reacting viscerally when she drives by a local high school and notices that its mascot is the Axemen.

And then there are the references to Kaye Turner, the 35-year-old marathon runner from Eugene who vanished the day before Christmas 1978 while on a run in Central Oregon. Unlike Jentz, Turner didn't survive a sociopathic attack. Her killers, however, were identified and convicted.

"Murdered women are too often forgotten," said Jentz, who keeps a newspaper photo of Turner on a bookshelf at her home. "I think Turner is someone I would have enjoyed, would have been in sync with. I wanted to write a lot more about her."

In telling of her own investigation, Jentz recounts how she initially suspected that Richard Godwin, a killer who raped and murdered a 5-year-old girl in Blue River in 1976, may also have been her attacker.

But as she interviewed more and more Redmond area residents, she discovered that many suspected a local man with a violent reputation - but that few shared their suspicions with police.

Jentz uses a pseudonym to describe her suspected attacker, though his real name has since been widely publicized. The man whom Jentz identifies as "Dirk Duran," ironically, completed a jail sentence and was released from the Deschutes County Jail last May - one day before Jentz was scheduled to give a public reading of her book in Sisters. She went ahead with the reading - with a police escort.

(Jentz's suspect was charged last month in an unrelated matter with criminal trespass, resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer, and is free pending arraignment, according to the Deschutes County Circuit Court. He was never charged in Jentz's case, where the statute of limitations had long since passed.)

The heroes in Jentz's book include Bob and DeeDee Kouns, who founded Crime Victims United in Oregon following the abduction and murder of their daughter, and who joined Jentz on many of her investigatory interviews. The Kounses, Jentz and others ultimately succeeded in persuading the Oregon Legislature to expand the statute of limitations in cases of attempted murder.

The book, recounting the stories of several Redmond area women in abusive relationships, is an indictment of the pervasiveness of the violence against women. Jentz, who writes that "action is my salvation," volunteers for several domestic violence prevention agencies in the Los Angeles area.

"It's getting worse and it's getting younger," she said of victims of domestic violence. "There's a lot of work to do."

She dedicates her book to her domestic partner, Donna Deitch, who is a film director. Jentz is now working on a screenplay version of her book, with hopes that it will someday be made into a movie with

Deitch as director.

Jentz said she intentionally downplays her sexual orientation in her book, for fear that it would be cast as a "gay coming of age" story and little else.

She writes honestly about her confused affection for her fellow bicycle rider, who does not remember the 1977 attack and doesn't want to relive it. Their friendship never recovered, and the two are not in contact.

For other readers, she said she hopes her book "will inspire women to get out of bad relationships and inspire men to fight against domestic violence." She said she is moved by others' compassion for her, but insists that she's not the one that anyone need worry about.

"I want people to transfer any sorrow they may feel for me to others who aren't fine and who have suffered egregious things," she said. "I'm in a place where I've obtained some amount of wisdom, and I can give back."