MixedThe Minneapolis Star Tribunea sweeping, cinematic approach that can feel almost disorienting by the end, as the names and years and relationships pile up. Flagg’s gentle storytelling makes the novel an easy, comfortable read that will leave a reader thinking about life, love and loss — but perhaps also wishing that the town’s many tales could be explored more deeply.
Jill Leovy
RaveThe Minneapolis Star TribuneLeovy, a longtime Los Angeles Times reporter who spent several years embedded with LAPD detectives, pieces together the case. From those notebook pages, we get a frequently painful look into the lives of weary detectives and sobbing mothers, meeting time and time again over bodies crumpled in the street ... The numbers she shares are stark; in the approximately two years between the book's central murder and the subsequent trial, more than 500 black men and boys were killed in Los Angeles County. But Leovy's careful attention to the people caught up in a cycle of violence makes the argument that the toll is far greater — on the victims' families, the people who investigate the crimes and on the rest of us, who should be paying more attention.
Eli Sanders
RaveThe Minneapolis Star TribuneSanders spares readers the horrors Hopper and Butz endured until the final third of the book. Although the story is told with incredible sensitivity, Sanders doesn't spare readers the truth that made journalists and court reporters cry in the courtroom. Many readers will want to read through it, all of it, to see the best of Sanders' elegant writing and learn of Butz and Hopper's profound courage.
