Review Of Vanessa Veselka's Essay 'Highway Of Lost Girls'

Invisible Women It is common for our society to prejudge the worth or value of something or someone by their outward appearance alone. In the essay entitled “Highway of Lost Girls” Vanessa Veselka returns back to the scene of her fugitive youth searching for clues, particularly that horrifying experience one night on I-95 when she hitched a ride from a stranger. Her essay also successfully exposes the struggle of invisible girls that were victimized and lost their lives to the hands of the serial killer Robert Ben Rhoades. Veselka’s use of suspense, pace and setting makes her essay very compelling. Veselka says, “People don’t leave home because things are going well; they leave because they feel they have to, and right or wrong, that’s how I felt”(41). This suggests that not all hitchhikers leave home in search of fun and adventure, some run away in hope of better future.
Veselka hitchhike and relies on truck drivers to take her from place to place, and have witnessed many terrifying and traumatizing sights.
She validates her story by returning back to the sites of each scene, particularly of that one incident when a body of a young women was pulled from a truck stop dumpster while Veselka’s sitting at a nearby truck somewhere near Martinsburg Pennsylvania, “I remember it could be me, since I was also a teenage hitchhiker” (Veselka38). Interestingly, no one seems to remember about the event. Her dad’s confirmation of the existence of the Martinsburg truck stop is a relief. She says, “My body relaxed, my memory may have been bent by sleep deprivation, but I was not crazy. There was a Martinsburg truck stop somewhere in my story, and there was a dead seventeen-year old hitchhiker and if it happened, she could be found. It was just a matter of looking harder”(45). Veselka’s willpower invites the readers to follow her in investigating the death of the
girl. Several days later heading south on I-95 through the Carolinas, Veselka was picked up by another trucker. She says, “I don’t remember much about him except that he was taller and leaner than most truckers and didn’t wear jeans or T-shirts. He wore a cotton button-down with the sleeves rolled neatly up over his biceps and had the cleanest cab I ever saw. He must seemed okay or I wouldn’t have gotten in the truck with him” (Veselka 38). Veselka’s detailed descriptions, proves how deceptive Rhoades can be. A man whose appearance masked his lack of credibility, purposely victimize women whose appearance lack credibility. Veselka’s raises awareness of the combined social neglect of the countless girls who vanished and gone unnoticed. She says, “This investigation of mine was a ghost story. The prism of Regina Walters, Shana Holts, and Lisa Pennal refracted into a set of icons-one with the shorn red-gold hair and an expression of resilience, and slightly crazy and ready to fight – each casting her own light, each hologram of girlhood” (53). By acknowledging them, Veselka also validates herself since they all share the same story. Veselka’s essay reveals the defenselessness of all the women who fall victim to the preying men. In contrasting the appearance of the victims and crooks, she shows how susceptible our society in making wrongful judgments. Work Cited
Veselka, Vanessa. “Highway of Lost Girl.” The Best American Essays 2013. Ed. Cheryl Strayed and Robert Atwan. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2013. Print.