★ 02/22/2016
When Tillman moved to Brownsville, Tex., in 2008 for a job at a local newspaper, she was assigned to write a story about the local debate over whether to demolish an apartment building where, in 2003, John Allen Rubio and Angela Camacho murdered and decapitated their three small children. Tillman becomes increasingly interested in the crime and how the proposed destruction of the building was the catalyst for the community to wrestle with it. In order to fully understand the family involved in the crime, she traces their place in their south Texas community and explores the violent history of the region. Did Rubio, who orchestrated the murders, truly believe his children were possessed by demons? Why did Camacho go along with it? Tillman's persistent, gritty journalism reveals that the case is more complicated and nuanced than the headlines would indicate. But still another question persists: how does a community cope with the long lasting effects of such a revolting crime? 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. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency.
The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts: Murder and Memory in an American City
Narrated by Julia Whelan
Laura TillmanUnabridged — 6 hours, 47 minutes
The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts: Murder and Memory in an American City
Narrated by Julia Whelan
Laura TillmanUnabridged — 6 hours, 47 minutes
Audiobook (Digital)
Free with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription | Cancel Anytime
Already Subscribed?
Sign in to Your BN.com Account
Related collections and offers
FREE
with a B&N Audiobooks Subscription
Overview
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 run down, and in their aftermath a consensus developed in the community that it should be destroyed.
In 2008, journalist Laura Tillman covered the story for The Brownsville Herald. The questions it raised haunted her and set her on 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. Tillman spoke 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. Her investigation is “a dogged attempt to understand what happened, a review of the psychological, sociological and spiritual explanations for the crime...a meditation on the death penalty and on the city of Brownsville” Star Tribune (Minneapolis).
The result is a brilliant exploration of some of our age's most important social issues and a beautiful, profound meditation on the truly human forces that drive them. “This thought-provoking...book exemplifies provocative long-form journalism that does not settle for easy answers” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
Editorial Reviews
"A devastating tale of true crime and the sociology of the dirt-poor border town where it took place... Even in the horror, there are glints of hope."
A dogged attempt to understand what happened, a review of the psychological, sociological and spiritual explanations for the crime . . . a meditation on the death penalty and on the city of Brownsville. . . . The short lives of these “small ghosts” are given lasting meaning in this book.
"As disturbing as it is insightful and mesmerizing."
"The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts takes as its subject the long shadow of an unthinkable crime—suggesting that thinking about the unthinkable might be a necessary part of the human enterprise. 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."
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.
"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. In the process, she paints a perfect picture of true journalism: its labor, its obsessiveness, its challenges, its toll, and also its value. I can't fathom how difficult this story was to tell, nor can I measure its greater meaning now that it has been told."
"The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts is as tragic as it is ultimately tender. 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."
"Rather than focus on the gory details, Tillman instead is interested in how Brownsville itself has been wounded, and how it sets about to recover. As a good reporter must, she talks to everyone from lawyers and psychiatrists who consulted on the case to local people who still regard the building as a site housing evil... There is strength in her rejection of a single narrative."
All the issues that plague those living in poverty are in evidence in this story of love and loss in Brownsville, Texas. Laura Tillman delicately excavates the lives at the center of this tragic tale, providing insights into the people and the place that made them. She 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. To better understand the social issues at play here and across the country, please, read this book!
"The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts is as tragic as it is ultimately tender. 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."
A diligent and sensitive meditation on how we reconcile ourselves to human acts that surpass human comprehension.
"A true story that reads like a mesmerizing novel. The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts is equally the story of a young reporter struggles to uncover truth. Every aspiring and young reporter should read it to know how a reporter should work. You will not be able to put it down.
★ 03/01/2016
The best true crime can be gutting to read. Journalist Tillman's intense, well-written, and yet horrific account explores the lives of a young couple who murdered their three children. The author examines the building in which the family lived, the neighborhood, its residents, and the border town in which they all reside. Tillman goes beyond the question of "why" and delves into the geographic, racial, class, and cultural divides that shape poverty-stricken Brownsville, TX. Her correspondence and meetings with the children's father are at once heartbreaking and disturbing, and Tillman's explanation of her own feelings as she engages with him deepens the narrative rather than distracts. She follows the shockwaves of his actions through the community and local justice system, interviewing lawyers for both sides and documenting their philosophical and moral attitudes about crime, mental illness, the death penalty, and the nature of good and evil. VERDICT For readers who prefer thoughtfulness to titillation. The murders may not have been widely known outside of Brownsville, but this book will be.—Kate Sheehan, C.H. Booth Lib., Newtown, CT
★ 2016-01-26
A haunted, haunting examination of mental illness and murder in a more or less ordinary American city. The small ghosts of debut author Tillman's title are those of three young children, innocent of any wrongdoing, who were killed in March 2003 by a drugged, arguably insane young man, the father of one of the victims, and his common-law wife. And not just killed: apparently convinced that the children were possessed, John Allen Rubio stabbed them repeatedly and decapitated them. Not for nothing is one of the chapters titled "Don't Read This Chapter Before Going to Bed": the facts of the case are horrific. A journalist working in Brownsville, Texas, when the case occurred, Tillman writes of her initial reluctance to engage the story. "I had never been drawn to tragic crimes," she writes. "Like many people, I pushed them out of mind when I could. It was easier to box them up and store them on a mental shelf of humanity's worst moments." Moreover, the media plays these tragic crimes for a time and then shelves them, moving on to the next atrocity. But what of the actors in the crime? Tillman looks deeply into the life and mind of Rubio, with whom she corresponded as he idled on death row, alternately convinced that he was the hero of the piece and aware of his guilt. The author raises or intimates difficult questions as she hears out Rubio, whose insanity defense was unsuccessful: what is it about our kind that makes us do such awful things? How does a community where an awful crime has been committed work toward healing after the cameras have been packed up and the reporters' notepads put away? How much compassion does a mentally ill person who has murdered deserve? Tillman's narrative, mature and thoughtful, eventually forces readers to examine the justice of the death penalty itself. A Helter Skelter for our time, though without a hint of sensationalism—unsettling in the extreme but written with confidence and deep empathy.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940171263980 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster |
| Publication date: | 04/05/2016 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Videos
