A father transforms the attempt to fathom his son’s senseless murder into a complex, surprising account of memory and discovery amid dark American corners of insanity, gun violence, and malfeasance. Gibson’s staid life as an antiquarian bookseller was demolished by the death of his 18-year-old son, Galen, in a 1992 mass shooting at Simon’s Rock College by student Wayne Lo. With the school uncommunicative, his family lost to grief, and their civil suit against the college stalemated, he descended into drinking, dark fantasy, and loosed moorings, then ultimately righted himself by embarking upon a (vehicular) “walkabout” in an effort to understand Galen’s death. This results in a meandering narrative in which Gibson’s propulsive loss is leavened by wry humor and increasing awareness of his situation’s contemporary singular absurdity. He explores Lo’s path to murder, the ramifications of firearms availability, and the role of the college, law enforcement, and psychology in the case’s disposition, always with startling, engrossing results. Though his family’s heartbreak at Galen’s loss makes for tough reading, it’s to Gibson’s credit as a debut author that his rangy prose and concise aggregate of observation draws one in thoroughly. Rarely maudlin, his book resonates with the paradoxical relationship between fathers and sons and the harder-edged interactions among today’s confused, rigidly bohemian youth. And his attempts to comprehend the terrible enigma of Wayne Lo are also invaluable, given that Lo’s act is practically a template for the mass shootings that have become a pox on the nation. Yet there’s another dark story here: an instance in which present-day hesitancies toward judgment and action result in a catastrophic institutional failure. Gibson finds numerous ways in which college officials thwarted security personnel and missed opportunities to interrupt Lo in his weapon acquisition. (After years of insurance-company wrangling, an undisclosed settlement was reached.) This book should be seriously considered by education professionals, as well as by violence survivors who might benefit from Gibson’s singular odyssey.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-56836-292-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Kodansha
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Bowers's enthralling manhunt for a pseudonymous poem-thief is a multifaceted investigation into art and originality. Although the New York Times, the Times of London, and other media have publicized Bowers's battle with an unknown plagiarist, his own account taps both the personal experience of literary theft and the cultural questions it poses. The hunt begins in January 1992, when a fellow poet notifies Bowers (English/Iowa State Univ.) that one of his poems, with minor alterations, has appeared in the Mankato Poetry Review but is attributed to a ``David Sumner.'' Bowers and his wife investigate and eventually discover that poems by Mark Strand, Sharon Olds, Marcia Hurlow, and Robert Gibb are among 57 works printed under Sumner's alias in 46 publications. Sumner has repeatedly used two of Bowers's poems (they have appeared 20 times in 19 different literary magazines). Both poems are deeply intimate, drawn from Bowers's own life, and he is as wounded by their mangled appropriation as he is baffled by his campus colleagues' indifference. The initial inquiry does not turn up much more than embarrassed and often uncooperative editors and the name David Jones, a.k.a. David Sumner, with an address in Oregon. Assisted by a slightly bemused lawyer and a meticulously diligent private detective, Bowers and his wife at first attempt only to stop Jones's submissions and force him to admit guilt, but Jones proves to be a cunningly evasive and ultimately sinister character. Even though Bowers can never pin down Jones or his antisocial motives, he discovers that an alarming but revealing incident of child-molesting ended his nemesis's teaching career. Bowers finishes with a final, creepy twist: Someone with David Sumner's m.o. but calling himself ``Paul G. Schmidt'' has been trying to submit plagiarized short stories to literary magazines. Partly a page-turning detective story, partly a modern defense of poetry, Bowers's brief book does poetic justice to a literary crime.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-393-04007-0
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
A gripping account of the serendipitous investigation that uncovers two miscarriages of justice that branded innocent boys as killers. While doing some unrelated research in 1989, criminology professor (Edinboro Univ.) and former FBI agent Fisher came across the case of 11-year-old Charlie Zubryd, who confessed to the hatchet murder of his mother Helen 28 months after its occurrence in 1956 in Sewickley Township, Penn. Inconsistencies in evidence reports, the delay in gaining a confession, and Fisher's doubt that an eight-year old could drive a hatchet five inches into a skull led Fisher to investigate. Eventually, he found that the boy had been coerced into his confession by an overzealous homicide detective—the same man who would oversee the false confession of a second minor, 13-year-old Jerry Pacek, in another woman's murder. Unsatisfied with demonstrating that the two boys were innocent, Fisher began hunting for the true killers; his findings comprise the last part of the book. As in his previous book (The Lindbergh Case, 1987), Fisher is deliberate in unraveling evidence: Conversations are recounted at length, evidence is carefully gathered and described. Zubryd and Pacek are victims of a manipulative, fame-seeking detective, but they are not presented as Victims of Society. Except for one transforming event that stole their childhood, they are men who would likely have lived out their lives without incident. Fisher's precise reporting also lends an effective sense of place: Descriptions of a funeral home, of houses, courts, and street corners, all conjure up mid-century Pittsburgh and the mill towns that surrounded it. While today's legal process often seems lost in loopholes and deals, this tale reminds readers that there really are miscarriages of justice. Fisher's righting of two terrible wrongs is a remarkable act of generosity; and his narrative of those events is haunting and worthwhile. (photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Dec. 14, 1996
ISBN: 0-8093-2069-X
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Southern Illinois Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1996
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