She forgave the man who murdered her daughter, and answers his letters from prison

After her 25-year-old daughter, Dana, was murdered in 2007, Barbara Mangi felt many things: fear, anger, an almost suffocating sadness.

But forgiveness? No. Even though Mangi suspected almost from the first that her big-hearted daughter would have forgiven the college friend who stabbed and strangled her, Mangi could not. Even as Mangi, a devout Catholic, came to believe that God himself wanted her to forgive Dana's killer, she resisted.

"God, don't you make any exceptions?" she would ask.

"You must. You must make exceptions. I know we are supposed to forgive people who hurt us but this is the extreme situation. This kid murdered my daughter. If you're going to want me to forgive this person, you're going to have to make it happen, because I just can't."

Mangi, who details her long journey to forgiveness in the new book, "Reawakening: Return of Lightness and Peace after My Daughter's Murder," eventually not only forgave Patrick Ford