Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight Against the Drug Companies that Delivered the Opoid Crisis
Eric Eyre, 2020
Scribner
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781982105310
Summary
From a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter from the smallest newspaper ever to win the prize in the investigative reporting category, an urgent, riveting, and heartbreaking investigation into the corporate greed that pumped millions of pain pills into small Appalachian towns, decimating communities.
Death in Mud Lick is the story of a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, that distributed 12 million opioid pain pills in three years to a town with a population of 382 people—and of one woman, desperate for justice, after losing her brother to overdose.
Debbie Preece’s fight for accountability for her brother’s death took her well beyond the Sav-Rite Pharmacy in coal country, ultimately leading to three of the biggest drug wholesalers in the country.
She was joined by a crusading lawyer and by local journalist, Eric Eyre, who uncovered a massive opioid pill-dumping scandal that shook the foundation of America’s largest drug companies—and won him a Pulitzer Prize.
Part Erin Brockovich, part Spotlight, Death in Mud Lick details the clandestine meetings with whistleblowers; a court fight to unseal filings that the drug distributors tried to keep hidden, a push to secure the DEA pill-shipment data, and the fallout after Eyre’s local paper, the Gazette-Mail, the smallest newspaper ever to win a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, broke the story.
Eyre follows the opioid shipments into individual counties, pharmacies, and homes in West Virginia and explains how thousands of Appalachians got hooked on prescription drugs—resulting in the highest overdose rates in the country.
But despite the tragedy, there is also hope as citizens banded together to create positive change—and won.
A work of deep reporting and personal conviction, Eric Eyre’s intimate portrayal of a national public health crisis illuminates the shocking pattern of corporate greed and its repercussions for the citizens of West Virginia—and the nation—to this day. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Broad Axe, Pennsylvania
• Education—B.A., Loyola University-New Orleans; M.A., University of South Florida
• Awards—Pulitizer Prize-Investigative Reporting
• Currently—lives in Charleston, West Virginia
Eric Eyre has been a newspaper reporter in West Virginia since 1998. In 2017, his investigation into massive shipments of opioids to the state’s southern coalfields was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia, with his wife and son.
Book Reviews
Powerful …. [Eyre] writes with candor and gravity…. [Death in Mud Lick] is the work of an author who understands that objectivity is not the same as bland neutrality. I expect it will be taught to aspiring reporters for many years to come. It's the story of an epidemic; it's also the story of a newspaper.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
Death in Mud Lick is a product of one reporter’s sustained outrage: a searing spotlight on the scope and human cost of corruption and negligence."
Washington Post
At the Gazette-Mail, Eyre’s career has been the stuff of quiet legend…. Eyre served his community in a time of need. With his new book, he took the death of a coal miner, William (Bull) Preece, found dead in a trailer in Mud Lick amid a residue of crushed pills, and told the how and the why. His reporting led to restrictions on prescriptions, greater tracking, more transparency. He shamed an industry and saved lives. Working at a small newspaper, Eyre made a big difference.
NewYorker.com
[An] important new book …. Death in Mud Lick is more than a takedown of the out-of-state predators who exploited West Virginians for obscene profit; it’s a 300-page rebuttal to those who dismiss honest reporting as #fakenews, or claim that journalism doesn’t matter… [and] a real-life legal thriller that barrels along like a runaway coal truck on Horsepen Mountain.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
(Starred review) [R]iveting…. As Eyre labored… to pry information from obfuscating drug firms… he was also contending with Parkinson’s disease…. Packed with colorful details…, this page-turning journalistic thriller shines a brilliant spotlight on a national tragedy.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Eyre… exposes inadequate DEA oversight, blatant conflicts of interest…. The book ends with an unresolved question: Is the multimillion dollar settlement from drug companies enough?… Timely and well documented. —Antoinette Brinkman, formerly with Southwest Indiana Mental Health Ctr. Lib., Evansville
Library Journal
(Starred review) Compellingly told…. [A] tale of compassionate people deeply wronged and a dogged journalist who won't stand for it.
Booklist
[D]isturbing, moving, and heart-wrenching…. [H]ow time-consuming, budget-busting investigative journalism functions despite circumstances that mitigate against it. Timely, depressing, engrossing reportage on an issue that can't receive too much attention.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for DEATH IN MUD LICK … then take off on your own:
1. Author Eric Eyre packs his book with a fair amount of statistical data; nonetheless, or perhaps because of the data, Death in Mud Lick is shocking. What numbers stunned you most?
2. Discuss the role Debbie Preece played in cracking open this tragedy by initiating a wrongful-death lawsuit. Would you have had the courage or tenacity or energy she had? Consider, too, the doggedness of Eric Eyre, who, while investigating the roots of the opioid epidemic, was suffering from the onset of Parkinson's Disease.
3. Talk about West Virginia's opioid addiction, in terms of both its sheer numbers and its tragic toll on human life. How did it even get started?
4. Who are the big villains here? There are plenty. Talk about the pharmacists, doctors, and companies—all of whom profited—as well as the shameful lack of oversight on the part of government agencies.
5. William Morrisey, in particular, is targeted in Eyre's account. Explain his role.
6. Death in Mud Lick is also the story of a small town newspaper. What is happening to local papers, and how does this book reveal the importance local journalism?
7. Eyre ends his book with the question of whether or not a multi-million-dollar settlement from drug companies is sufficient. What is your opinion?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Hollywood Park: A Memoir
Mikel Jollett, 2020
Celadon Books
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250621566
Summary
A remarkable memoir of a tumultuous life.
Mikel Jollett was born into one of the country’s most infamous cults, and subjected to a childhood filled with poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse. Yet, ultimately, his is a story of fierce love and family loyalty told in a raw, poetic voice that signals the emergence of a uniquely gifted writer.
We were never young. We were just too afraid of ourselves. No one told us who we were or what we were or where all our parents went.
They would arrive like ghosts, visiting us for a morning, an afternoon. They would sit with us or walk around the grounds, to laugh or cry or toss us in the air while we screamed.
Then they’d disappear again, for weeks, for months, for years, leaving us alone with our memories and dreams, our questions and confusion.
So begins Hollywood Park, Mikel Jollett’s remarkable memoir. His story opens in an experimental commune in California, which later morphed into the Church of Synanon, one of the country’s most infamous and dangerous cults.
Per the leader’s mandate, all children, including Jollett and his older brother, were separated from their parents when they were six months old, and handed over to the cult’s "School." After spending years in what was essentially an orphanage, Mikel escaped the cult one morning with his mother and older brother.
But in many ways, life outside Synanon was even harder and more erratic.
In his raw, poetic and powerful voice, Jollett portrays a childhood filled with abject poverty, trauma, emotional abuse, delinquency and the lure of drugs and alcohol.
Raised by a clinically depressed mother, tormented by his angry older brother, subjected to the unpredictability of troubled step-fathers and longing for contact with his father, a former heroin addict and ex-con, Jollett slowly, often painfully, builds a life that leads him to Stanford University and, eventually, to finding his voice as a writer and musician.
Hollywood Park is told at first through the limited perspective of a child, and then broadens as Jollett begins to understand the world around him. Although Mikel Jollett’s story is filled with heartbreak, it is ultimately an unforgettable portrayal of love at its fiercest and most loyal. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 21, 1974
• Where—Santa Monica, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Stanford University
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Mikel Frans Jollett is an American musician and author, best known as the frontman for the Los Angeles-based indie rock band the Airborne Toxic Event. In 2020, he published his memoir, Hollywood Park, detailing his early childhood in an infamous religious cult and his eventual journey to wholeness.
Early life
Jollett's father spent three years (1963-66) in Chino State Prison. where he overcame a heroin addiction. Jollett's mother was a social worker with a master's degree from University of California Berkeley. The couple met and started a family in Synanon, an experimental commune society in Santa Monica, California. Jollett and his older brother were born and raised there, spending a large part of their time separated from their parents. Once the commune turned to violence, his mother left when he was five, taking his brother and him. They eventually made their way to Oregon.
Jollett later went to live with his father and step mother in Los Angeles. He attended Stanford University, graduating with honors in 1996. While at Stanford, Jollett was a member of Claude Steele's lab group in which he conducted research on the concept Stereotype Threat. His work focused on how negative racial stereotypes negatively affected the identity and test performance of high school students.
Writing
In the summer of 2008, McSweeney's (27) published Jollett's short story, "The Crack." He was a frequent contributor to All Things Considered on NPR, the Los Angeles Times, an editor at large for Men's Health, and the managing editor of Filter magazine. By 2005 Jollett decided to pursue music a career in music.
Music
Jollett began seriously writing songs following a week in March 2006, during which he underwent a break-up and learned his mother had been diagnosed with cancer. This quick succession of events spurred a period of intense songwriting featured on the debut album of his band, Toxic Airborne Evenet.
True to his literary roots, Jollett named the band after a section in Don DeLillo's White Noise, in which a chemical spill emits a poisonous cloud, dubbed an "airborne toxic event." The band went on to achieve a considerable following, with "Sometime Around Midnight," one of the songs on their debut album achieving certified gold status.
Personal
Jollett and his wife Lizette have a son and a daughter and live in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/28/2020.)
Book Reviews
A Gen-X This Boy’s Life…. Music and his fierce brilliance boost Jollett; a visceral urge to leave his background behind propels him to excel…. In the end, Jollett shakes off the past to become the captain of his own soul. Hollywood Park is a triumph
Oprah Magazine
Mikel Jollett, the front man of indie band Airborne Toxic Event, chronicles his tumultuous life. Jollett was born into one of the country’s most infamous cults and subjected to a childhood filled with poverty, addiction and emotional abuse. What comes through the pages is a story of fierce love and family loyalty ("20 books we're excited for in 2020").
Good Morning America
(Starred review) [A]rresting…. Jollett engagingly narrates his story… [and] talks about turning pain into music, getting help for abandonment issues, and finding love and starting a family.… [A] shocking but contemplative memoir about the aftermath of an unhealthy upbringing.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) Jollett is at his best when exploring his complicated relationship with his brother… [and] how music, and writing, became outlets for masking feelings of shame and coming to terms with the past. [An] absorbing memoir of self, discovery, and rediscovery.
Library Journal
Engaging and heartbreaking. A good choice for fans of memoirs about overcoming dysfunctional childhoods like Educated and The Glass Castle.
Booklist
A painstaking emotional accounting of a tortured youth ultimately redeemed through music, therapy, and love.… Ultimately, as he lucidly shows, music would change his life. A musician proves himself a talented, if long-winded, writer with a very good memory.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for HOLLYWOOD PARK … and then take off on your own:
1. In the opening lines to his memoir, Mikel Jollett says, "we were never young." What does he mean?
2. Why did Jollett's parents join Synanon? What were they looking for, and what did the cult promise its members?
3. (Follow-up to Question 2) Describe the practices at the commune and what eventually drove Mikel's mother to leave.
4. Talk about the aftermath of the cult and the affect it had on the family, especially on Mikel. Consider, too, his relationship with his older brother, Tony.
5. Jollett's mother, Gerry, was hardly an ideal mother. Did she love her sons? Eventually she was diagnosed with a mental disorder. Were you surprised?
6. At the age of 11, Jollett goes to live with his father, who, he had been told by his mother, was a terrible person. What did he learn about Jimmy? What role does Jimmy come to play in Mikel's life?
7. How did Jollett's upbringing affect the way he related to women—but not just to women, to many, if not most, people? What was the facade he erected, and why was he hiding behind it?
8. Jollett ponders the pain engendered by his trauma. He writes, "How long can you live with ghosts before deciding to become one?" What does he mean? How does he confront those ghosts? What mental processes does he journey through in order to overcome his past?
9. What role did music play in Jollett's journey through pain? What insights does he gain into his own emotional state which helped him understand his life?
10. (Follow-up to Question 9) Do you think painters, writers, performers, and musicians, use their creativity as a way to explore and/or express their personal pain?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy
Alistair Gee, Dani Anguiano, 2020
W.W. Norton
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781324005148
Summary
The harrowing story of the most destructive American wildfire in a century.
There is no precedent in postwar American history for the destruction of the town of Paradise, California. On November 8, 2018, the community of 27,000 people was swallowed by the ferocious Camp Fire, which razed virtually every home and killed at least 85 people.
The catastrophe seared the American imagination, taking the front page of every major national newspaper and top billing on the news networks. It displaced tens of thousands of people, yielding a refugee crisis that continues to unfold.
Fire in Paradise is a dramatic and moving narrative of the disaster based on hundreds of in-depth interviews with residents, firefighters and police, and scientific experts.
Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano are California-based journalists who have reported on Paradise since the day the fire began. Together they reveal the heroics of the first responders, the miraculous escapes of those who got out of Paradise, and the horrors experienced by those who were trapped.
Their accounts are intimate and unforgettable, including…
• the local who left her home on foot as fire approached while her 82-year-old father stayed to battle it;
• the firefighter who drove into the heart of the inferno in his bulldozer;
• the police officer who switched on his body camera to record what he thought would be his final moments as the flames closed in;
• the mother who, less than 12 hours after giving birth in the local hospital, thought she would die in the chaotic evacuation with her baby in her lap.
Gee and Anguiano also explain the science of wildfires, write powerfully about the role of the power company PG&E in the blaze, and describe the poignant efforts to raise Paradise from the ruins.
This is the story of a town at the forefront of a devastating global shift—of a remarkable landscape sucked ever drier of moisture and becoming inhospitable even to trees, now dying in their tens of millions and turning to kindling.
It is also the story of a lost community, one that epitomized a provincial, affordable kind of Californian existence that is increasingly unattainable.
It is, finally, a story of a new kind of fire behavior that firefighters have never witnessed before and barely know how to handle. What happened in Paradise was unprecedented in America. Yet according to climate scientists and fire experts, it will surely happen again. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Alastair Gee is an award-winning editor and reporter at the Guardian who has also written for the New Yorker online, the New York Times, and the Economist. Gee lives in New York City.
Dani Anguiano writes for the Guardian and was formerly a reporter for the Chico Enterprise-Record, where she covered Butte County, including Chico and Paradise. Having lived in Butte County for a decade, Anguiano now resides in the San Francisco Bay area.
(Bios from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
The heart of the book… is the individual stories of bravery and tragedy that played out in Paradise…. The horror of the fire’s relentless advance is viscerally evoked, although the details sometimes verge on unbearable…. The authors temper the horror with stories of heroism and rescue…. [Fire in Paradise] has the narrative propulsion and granular detail of the best breaking-news disaster journalism…. The main takeaway from their book is sobering:… we will likely see more fires as destructive as the one in Paradise.
Rachel Monroe - New York Times Book Book Review
[T]ense and detailed…. Gee and Anguiano vividly describe the conflagration without sensationalizing it…. This impressive report makes a convincing case that such tragedies as the Camp Fire are not a freak occurrence, but a glimpse of the future.
Publishers Weekly
[A] gripping, in-depth account of the Camp Fire that devastated Paradise, CA…. A vividly descriptive, compelling, well-researched, page-turning work of narrative nonfiction, both heartbreaking and uplifting. —Sue O'Brien, Downers Grove, IL
Library Journal
Drawing heavily on the powerful interviews they conducted at the time and in the stunned aftermath, [Gee and Anguiano] have created a gripping account of the fire and how it affected the community.
Booklist
[A] powerful book debut… [drawing on] extensive reporting to produce a tense, often moving narrative about the fire that destroyed the northern California town of Paradise.… A riveting narrative that provides further compelling evidence for the urgency of environmental stewardship.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for FIRE IN PARADISE … then take off on your own:
1. Talk about the causes of the wild fire, both the immediate and underlying causes.
2. (Follow-up to Question 1) What role did Pacific Gas and Electric play? Is the near-villainy that the authors tend to ascribe to the utility deserved or unfairly placed?
3. Discuss the many individual accounts included in Gee and Anguiano's account. Which stories do you find most horrific or most tragic—and which of them illustrate great courage, even heroism. Consider not only residents, old and young, but first responders, doctors, and nurses, and even the drivers stuck in traffic.
4. Talk about the town's preparedness to avert such a disaster, its evacuation plan and emergency alert system. What happened to a town that seemed to be so well prepared?
5. What do the authors suggest will be the long-term future for northern California and towns like Paradise?
6. Should Paradise be rebuilt?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Hilarious World of Depression
John Moe, 2020
St. Martin's Press
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250209283
Summary
For years John Moe, critically-acclaimed public radio personality and host of The Hilarious World of Depression podcast, struggled with depression; it plagued his family and claimed the life of his brother in 2007.
As Moe came to terms with his own illness, he began to see similar patterns of behavior and coping mechanisms surfacing in conversations with others, including high-profile comedians who’d struggled with the disease.
Moe saw that there was tremendous comfort and community in open dialogue about these shared experiences and that humor had a unique power. Thus was born the podcast The Hilarious World of Depression.
Inspired by the immediate success of the podcast, Moe has written a remarkable investigation of the disease, part memoir of his own journey, part treasure trove of laugh-out-loud stories and insights drawn from years of interviews with some of the most brilliant minds facing similar challenges.
Throughout the course of this powerful narrative, depression’s universal themes come to light, among them,
• struggles with identity
• misunderstanding of symptoms
• challenges of work-life
• self-medicating
• fallout in the lives of our loved ones
• tragedy of suicide
• hereditary aspects of the disease.
The Hilarious World of Depression illuminates depression in an entirely fresh and inspiring way. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 10, 1968
• Raised—Federal Town, Washington, USA
• Education—B.A., Whitman College
• Currently—St. Paul, Minnesota
John Moe has served as host of national public radio broadcasts such as Weekend America, Marketplace Tech Report and, from 2010- 2015, Wits.
His reporting has been heard on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Marketplace, Day to Day, and more.
Moe's writing appears in humor anthologies, the New York Times Magazine, McSweeney’s, and the Seattle Times. He’s a much in-demand public speaker and the author of multiple books, including The Hilarious World of Depression. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review) Moe… wryly reflects on life as a "saddie" in this stirring memoir.… [S]ide-eye commentary separates Moe’s story from the trite "70s self-help" he loathes…. Moe’s edifying, enjoyable take on the realities of living with depression will uplift any reader.
Publishers Weekly
Moe is exactly the right person to give an attentive, irreverent voice to those suffering with depression.
Booklist
The narrative gains considerable momentum when Moe shifts into his adult years…. Here, the author focuses more attention on the origins and evolution of his series…. The book would have benefited from a tighter structure, but it’s inspiring and relatable .
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for THE HILARIOUS WORLD OF DEPRESSION … then take off on your own:
1. This book is a personal account of John Moe's battle with depression. He says that after years of depressive thoughts, his wife urged him to find help for what he refers to as his desire "not so much to die as simply not to be alive anymore." Do you understand what Moe means? Does that comment have any resonance with you?
2. Talk about Moe's family background, especially his father's alcoholism and brother's addiction. To what degree has his family history contributed to his own depression?
3. (Follow-up to Question 2) What is known about the hereditary aspects of depression?
4. Moe says he came to recognize the signs of depression early in his life—in middle school. What particular symptoms during those adolescent years did Moe see in himself?
5. What effect does his brother's suicide have on Moe? He writes of a "salad of regret, anger, confusion, and horror."
6. Moe digs deeply into the various characteristics of depression. Talk about the problems of identifying the disorder and then acknowledging it, of self-medicating, and of the way depression affects the lives of families and loved ones.
6. If you are comfortable doing so in a group, talk about how Moe's book relates to your own life—if not to you, specifically, than perhaps to to someone you know and love, a family member or a friend.
7. Why the book's title: what is "hilarious" about depression?
8. Talk about what led up to Moe's podcast, which has the same name as his book. Have you listened to the podcast?
9. Are you surprised at some of the well-known people who suffer with depression? Do you know others?
10. What have you learned about depression after reading this book? What in particular surprised you? Do you ever think that, as a society, we have over diagnosed depression—and we are over-medicated—as some skeptics have claimed? Or do you think the disorder is actually under-diagnosed?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
The Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee
Casey Cep, 2019
Knopf Doubleday
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101947869
Summary
The stunning story of an Alabama serial killer and the true-crime book that Harper Lee worked on obsessively in the years after To Kill a Mockingbird
Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim.
Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell's murderer was acquitted—thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend.
Sitting in the audience during the vigilante's trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more years working on her own version of the case.
Now Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South.
At the same time, she offers a deeply moving portrait of one of the country's most beloved writers and her struggle with fame, success, and the mystery of artistic creativity. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1985
• Where—Cordova, Maryland, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University; M.Phil, Oxford University; Yale University Divinity School
• Currently—lives in Chesapeake Bay Area, Maryland
Casey Cep grew up in Maryland's Chesapeake Bay area, where she still lives and writes. She graduated from Harvard with a degree in English and earned an M.Phil in theology at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. She is presently studying at Yale Divinity School in order to be ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Cep's work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, and New Republic, among other publications. The Furious Hours (2019) is her first book. (Adapted from the publisher.)
Book Reviews
There are two intertwined mysteries at the heart of Furious Hours, Casey Cep’s meticulously researched narrative about an Alabama preacher accused of multiple murders, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who tried and failed to tell his story. The first section of the book, a spellbinding [is] true crime story.… [T]he other mystery proved even knottier. It involved reconstructing years of investigative work done by Harper Lee, who was fascinated by the Maxwell murders and worked on a true crime book about the case that she titled “The Reverend.” To this day, it remains unclear how much she wrote, why she stopped writing or whether she finished the book.
Alexander Alter - New York Times
It’s one measure of just how rich Casey Cep’s material is, and how artfully she handles it, that I have given away only about a tenth of the interest and delight contained within just the first third or so of her book. She reminded me all over again how much of good storytelling is leading the reader to want to know the things you are about to tell him, while still leaving him to feel that his interest was all his idea.
Michael Lewis - New York Time Book Review
If you’re a Harper Lee fan, come for the juicy tale of the true-crime story she wanted to write but never did.… If you’re not, come for Cep’s writing, which is so good that you won’t mind a side trip into the history of life insurance. Basically, if you love superb nonfiction, pick up a copy of Furious Hours; you may not put it down again for several of your own.
Bethanne Patrick - Washington Post
E]ssentially two books—a thriller and a biography—that Ms. Cep stitches into an intriguing and occasionally gripping whole. The only problem is that the enigma of Harper Lee is far more fascinating than the criminal trial she ultimately abandoned.… [F]or a true-crime tale, it is awkwardly devoid of suspense.… Ms. Cep pads this story with thoughtful digressions on Alabama’s politics and full profiles of Maxwell and Radney, but she strangely makes no mention of Lee until halfway through the book. When Harper Lee finally does arrive, it is a relief. Ms. Cep’s brisk and lively account of the woman’s life offers few surprises, but it is engrossing all the same.
Emily Brobrow - Wall Street Journal
(Starred review) [A] brilliant account of Harper Lee’s failed attempt to write a true crime book.… Meticulously researched, this is essential reading for anyone interested in Lee and American literary history.
Publishers Weekly
By fully detailing the crimes before Lee even appears, Cep allows readers to see the case through Lee's eyes…. Above all, this is a book about inspiration and how a passion for the mysteries of humanity can cause an undeniable creative spark. A well-tempered blend of true crime and literary lore.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers Book Club Resources. They can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(Resources by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)