A poignant, gripping story of love, memory, and physical and psychological brutality.
Gritz blends memoir with true-crime detective work in this nonfiction book.
Dedicating the book to her sister, Andrea “Angie” Boggs (“the first person I remember loving”), the author explores a mystery-filled tragedy that has plagued her family for more than 40 years. The story begins with Angie’s final hours in 1982 prior to her gruesome murder and those of her husband, Raymond, her infant son, and her unborn baby. During a cold January, Angie and Raymond had invited a struggling unhoused couple into their San Francisco home, having experienced a life of hardship themselves. More than a month later, the remains of the family were discovered in a crawl space under their home. The vagrants who had stayed with them were subsequently arrested and convicted for their murders. Despite their convictions, Gritz, a college student at the time of Angie’s death, knew that key details were missing from the story of her sister’s life and death (“Did anyone ever learn their motive?”). Her secretive parents weren’t much help in providing answers, often casting Angie’s alleged behavioral problems as the driving narrative of her life. Following the death of her parents in 2002, the author delved into family records and microfilm research (she cites sources from her 10-year investigation at the end of the book) and discovered a history of abuse that her adopted sister had endured. The memoir’s revelations of family secrets make for an enthralling read, but the book’s true strength lies in the author’s heartfelt reflections on grief, survivor’s guilt, and trauma. Written in the form of a letter to Angie, this is a raw look at the beauty of sisterly love and the legacy of childhood neglect. Gritz’s often lyrical prose provides poignant reflections, which is no surprise given the author’s background as an award-winning poet and essayist. While previous iterations of some of the book’s material have been published in the New York Times, Salon, and elsewhere, this is a remarkably cohesive, genre-defying memoir that is at once a beautiful love letter and a haunting true-crime investigation.
A poignant, gripping story of love, memory, and physical and psychological brutality.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9781627205085
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Apprentice House
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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 Yorkerstaff 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
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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