For months they made news: Two suburban mothers whose only children were violently snatched away. Lynn Shiner’s family dominated the news beginning on Christmas day in 1994 when her ex-husband murdered Jen and Dave, her two young children.

Nancy Chavez returned from a cruise in 2003 to learn that her only daughter, Randi, had been stabbed to death in her garage. Months later she would learn that the murderer had been hired by her daughter’s husband.

In their new book, Stabbed in the Heart, Lynn Shiner and Nancy Chavez discuss the dark, months and years that followed these horrific crimes. Readers walk with them as they bury their children and observe them as they wallow in depression almost too deep to imagine. Somehow, from the depths of their despair, they uncovered the focus, drive, and commitment to helping others that is their gift back to their children.

Lynn Shiner turned her efforts toward other victims. Today she is the Director of the Office of Victims’ Services with the PA Commission on Crime and Delinquency. In 2004, she was presented with the National Crime Victim Service Award by Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Nancy Chavez, also a long-time employee of the state of Pennsylvania, channels her efforts toward her dream of building Randi’s House of Angels, a healing place for children who are exposed to and/ or are the victims of domestic violence. Randi’s House of Angels, established in October 2011, currently works in conjunction with domestic violence service providers in five counties in Pennsylvania.

Stabbed in the Heart was written in conjunction with Nancy Eshelman, a long-time journalist and author of a weekly column that appears in The Harrisburg Patriot-News.