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Alligator in the Ocean illustrates one family’s drive to stop a serial predator and overcome the heart-wrenching struggles that followed.
Anina Swan shares the true account of how she survived the brutality of a serial predator, Ivan, unveiled traumatic amnesia, and rallied help to stop his crime spree. With deep-seated courage, Anina did the unthinkable when she confronted her perpetrator. The result eventually delivered Ivan’s confessions of assaulting hundreds of children, according to local news reports. The chaotic aftermath ultimately led to his arrest and how Anina transformed her pain into purpose and adversity into triumph.
In Alligator in the Ocean, Anina creatively weaves scenes from three different perspectives: one of the child victims, herself as a young mother, and the perpetrator through portions of his handwritten letters that he wrote to his wife, Adele, while incarcerated. Anina illustrates how the wounds of crime reach beyond the victim and spread through family and community. She gives a deeply personal account of how she persevered and overcame what seemed impossible. Then how she transformed—through forgiveness sought and found. This poignant story proves that where there is hope, the crippling effects of violence can be overcome and result in a profound desire to live a better life.
Alligator in the Ocean is a unique story based on a collection of Anina’s journals, court documents, slides and photos, newspaper articles, interviews, and the original letters written by Ivan to his wife while incarcerated.
"What makes this survivor account unique is the way in which Anina Swan has crafted her story to give the reader a glimpse into the rocky road that the journey towards healing from childhood trauma involves. Moving back and forth between child Alexandra’s accounts of events as she lived them, and adult Anina’s vivid descriptions of her attempts to retrieve these memories of her own past, allows the reader for themselves experience some of the confusion and angst that Anina faced when snatches of memory appeared in the course of months of therapy with their meaning alluding her. In my decades of counseling those who have gone through similar hells, the confusion, terror, disbelief, rage, shame, depression, physical symptoms and so on that Anina depicts, gives voice to the experience of countless other childhood trauma survivors.”-Heather Davediuk Gingrich, Ph.D. Director, Graduate Certificate of Trauma Therapy Toccoa Falls College Author of: Restoring the Shattered Self (for counselors/helpers), Shattered No More (for survivors), and co-editor/contributor to Treating Trauma in Christian Counseling.