A flawed but fascinating examination of the unsettling intersection of a child molester, the Mormon Church and the American...
A detailed investigation into a serial pedophile and respected elder in the Mormon Church whose years as a child molester continued even after church leaders were alerted to the abuse.
Davis’ experience as a journalist proves invaluable in this inquiry into Brother Frank Curtis and the flood of destruction his abuse brought to several Mormon communities. In addition to revealing the emotional and psychological damage caused by Curtis’ horrendous sexual violations, the author divulges the gross negligence and, in some cases, intentional cover-up by bishops and other church leaders when the abuse was discovered. The backbone of the narrative is a lawsuit involving the victims, the Church of Latter Day Saints and the lawyers on both sides of the conflict. The main player is Tim Kosnoff, a lawyer for 18-year-old Jeremiah Scott, a childhood victim of Curtis who decided as an adult to sue the Mormon Church for its role. Davis uses the lawsuit to connect different narrative threads, including Curtis’ early life as a supposed small-time Chicago gangster working for Al Capone, the varied stories of many sex-abuse victims and the lives of the attorneys and investigators working on the case. The story is profoundly disturbing, especially when the author reveals the actual abuse followed by the seemingly insidious attempts of the Mormon Church to shield its members and its doctrines through legal loopholes like the clergy-penitent privilege. At times, the narrative becomes bogged down in legal minutiae and legal tit-for-tat. Also, the personal stories of all the people involved are often summarized rather than revealed through narration, characterization and dialogue, which leaves the reader wishing for more vivid scenes and creative storytelling rather than straight, unadorned reportage.
A flawed but fascinating examination of the unsettling intersection of a child molester, the Mormon Church and the American legal system.Pub Date: March 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4165-9103-0
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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