GROUND ZERO

Murphy documents his struggle to reassemble his memory after a traumatic arrest in this debut memoir.

In the spring of 2008, the author stayed in a hotel in Deland, Florida, while his home was being renovated. Murphy, who suffers from bipolar disorder, felt a manic episode coming on, so he switched hotels, thinking he would feel safer at a nearby Holiday Inn. Sometime later, he locked himself out of his room with the water running, causing it to flood into the hallway. Another guest shouted at him and threatened him until the police arrived; they then arrested Murphy on a charge of criminal mischief. The author asserts that while he was being held in the Volusia County Jail, “something extremely inhumane and perverse occurred…perpetrated by the guards on duty, somewhere between May 5, 2008, and on or around May 6, 2008, causing my mind to be shattered and erased.” A monthslong series of hospitalizations and court cases followed, during which Murphy attempted to recover his memory and address the wrongs that he felt had been done to him. This book—which is composed primarily of letters that the author wrote to various people, including his cousin, his pastor, his lawyer, his seventh-grade teacher, and even the president of the United States—is an account of his long legal and psychological struggle. Murphy’s prose can be difficult to follow at times. However, it features occasional flashes of visionary imagery: “Imagine your mind was the atmosphere, and it broke, sending all of the stars, planets, and moons into an orbit, never to be retrieved.” There are other moments that feel grandiose, as when the author says, “Just as Martin Luther King Jr. has been to the mountaintop for blacks in America, I can see clearly from the top of the mountain for people who are mentally ill.” The account may give readers the sense that authorities in Florida mishandled Murphy’s case. However, the book as a whole is disorganized, and it’s often difficult to piece its narrative together.

A fragmented, agonized, and puzzling account of mental illness and the justice system.