events @ the Library

In the middle of an April night in 1984, 18-year-old Billy Frank Gilley, Jr., killed his sleeping parents and then turned on his younger sister, who surprised him in the act. The murders ended years of mental and physical abuse that Billy and his other sister, Jody, had suffered at the hand of their parents. With an artistry that recalls Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song, and her own The Kiss, best-selling author Kathryn Harrison reveals the antecedents of the murders—of a crime of such violence that it had the power to sever past from present in her new book, While They Slept: An Inquiry into the Murder of a Family. Harrison will talk about the book and the impact of violence on the children in a deeply troubled family.

Books will be available for purchase and signing.
Author's website.
NYT Sunday Book Review.