Critics' Opinion:
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Published Apr 2016
256 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
A harrowing, profoundly personal investigation of the causes, effects, and communal toll of a deeply troubling crime - the brutal murder of three young children by their parents in the border city of Brownsville, Texas.
On March 11, 2003, in Brownsville, Texas - one of America's poorest cities - John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho murdered their three young children. The apartment building in which the brutal crimes took place was already rundown, and in their aftermath a consensus developed in the community that it should be destroyed. It was a place, neighbors felt, that was plagued by spiritual cancer.
In 2008, journalist Laura Tillman covered the story for The Brownsville Herald. The questions it raised haunted her, particularly one asked by the sole member of the city's Heritage Council to oppose demolition: is there any such thing as an evil building? Her investigation took her far beyond that question, revealing the nature of the toll that the crime exacted on a city already wracked with poverty. It sprawled into a six-year inquiry into the larger significance of such acts, ones so difficult to imagine or explain that their perpetrators are often dismissed as monsters alien to humanity.
With meticulous attention and stunning compassion, Tillman surveyed those surrounding the crimes, speaking with the lawyers who tried the case, the family's neighbors and relatives and teachers, even one of the murderers: John Allen Rubio himself, whom she corresponded with for years and ultimately met in person. The result is a brilliant exploration of some of our age's most important social issues, from poverty to mental illness to the death penalty, and a beautiful, profound meditation on the truly human forces that drive them. It is disturbing, insightful, and mesmerizing in equal measure.
"Starred Review. This thought-provoking portrait of a murder implicates the community at large and forces the reader to grapple with the death penalty, which Rubio is sentenced to. Tillman's book exemplifies provocative long-form journalism that does not settle for easy answers." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. For readers who prefer thoughtfulness to titillation. The murders may not have been widely known outside of Brownsville, but this book will be." - Library Journal
"Starred Review. A haunted, haunting examination of mental illness and murder in a more or less ordinary American city… Mature and thoughtful… A Helter Skelter for our time, though without a hint of sensationalism - unsettling in the extreme but written with confidence and deep empathy." - Kirkus
"Laura Tillman has undertaken the kind of work that only the rarest of reporters actively seeks: she has shown us that even in the darkest corners of society - and of the human soul - there is beauty and hope to be found, and there are no absolutes despite how eager we might be to ascribe them." - Jeff Hobbs, author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace
"This remarkable book is built of diligent reporting and sensitive reckoning; its questions haunted me long after I finished reading it. The invisible root system of social injustice that dwells beneath our justice system is made more visible here, thanks to Laura Tillman's passionate work and her willing heart." - Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams
"[Laura Tillman] plumbs the American class divide so astutely and so sensitively, it's near impossible not to see the humanity even in those we would have previously called monsters." - Jesmyn Ward, author of Men We Reaped and Salvage the Bones
"With stirringly poetic prose, Laura Tillman has written a story that will haunt you with the despair it reveals. Painstakingly researched and told with an unflinching eye for detail, she knows this world of the border." - Oscar Cásares, author of Brownsville
"Extraordinary… It is so exciting to see a young writer of such high intelligence and passionate unremitting commitment to a subject engage on this risky plane of investigation. The resulting book is a small masterpiece, contributing something very new, profound, and badly needed to our culture." - Suzannah Lessard, author of The Architect of Desire
This information about The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Laura Tillman is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, and Pacific Standard, among other publications. Originally from Maplewood, New Jersey, she began her career at The Brownsville Herald in South Texas. She holds a BA in International Studies from Vassar College and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College. This is her first book.
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