“A haunted, haunting examination of mental illness and murder in a far 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 created with confidence and deep empathy” (Kirkus Reviews, starred evaluate).

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 house building in which the brutal crimes about The Very long Shadow of Little Ghosts: Murder and Memory space within an American Town took place had been 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 arranged her on a six-year inquiry in to the larger need for such acts, types so difficult to assume or describe that their perpetrators are often dismissed as monsters alien to mankind. Tillman spoke using the attorneys who tried the situation, the family’s neighbours and relatives and teachers, actually one of the murderers: John Allen Rubio himself, whom she corresponded with for a long time and ultimately met personally. Her investigation can be “a dogged attempt to understand what happened, a review of the mental, sociological and religious explanations for the crime…a meditation in the loss of life penalty and on the city of Brownsville” Celebrity Tribune (Minneapolis).

The effect is a brilliant exploration of a few of our age’s most significant social issues and a beautiful, profound meditation on the truly human being forces that travel them. “This thought-provoking…reserve exemplifies provocative long-form journalism that will not accept easy answers” (Publishers Regular, starred review).