Book-It 'o12! Book #5
The Fifty Books Challenge, year three! (Years one, two, and three just in case you're curious.) This was a library request.
Title: The Lost Night: A Daughter's Search for the Truth of Her Father's Murder by Rachel Howard
Details: Copyright 2005, Dutton Books
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "On the night of June 22, 1986, ten-year-old Rachel Howard woke to a disturbing sight: pools of blood on the hallway carpet and a glimpse of her father clutching his stabbed throat. Stan Howard died minutes later, and his bizarre small-town murder was never solved. Rachel's father was thirty-two, a laid-back, handsome man who loved the music of Rod Stewart and had no known enemies. Faced with her family's shock, Rachel decided she would cope the only way she knew how: By keeping silent and trying to pretend the murder had never happened.
Now, seventeen years later and recently engaged, Rachel attempts to uncover for herself what happened that night. Finally reconnecting with her father's family, she sorts through her relatives' memories of his death and presses the less-than-helpful detectives. Still bewildered, she seeks the only other two people present at the murder: her former stepmother and stepbrother, neither of whom she has seen since her father's funeral. The result is a tender portrait of a father and a keen investigation of memory, truth, and how a family moves on from a tragedy for which they may never find answers."
Why I Wanted to Read It: This was mentioned on an episode of my current obsession, This American Life (link goes to the specific episode). The premise was fascinating so I figured I'd give it a try.
How I Liked It: The book has a unique hook that's undersold on the cover although it's played up (to a degree) by the author's appearance on This American Life: this isn't your typical victim memoir. Howard, unlike James Elroy, is actually vindicated when she's told the case is pretty much unsolvable. She goes into the fact that the crime has already defined her life so much as it is and she never pictured herself as the crime-solving bereaved daughter, out for vengeance. While such a premise (the freedom NOT to pursue the killer of a loved one) in a memoir could get obnoxious for a number of reasons (self-righteousness high on the list), Howard actually uses her decision to paint a staggeringly accessible portrait of grief and horror. She makes the experience far more tangible (and horrific) to the average person than (I'd venture) any true crime novel.
The memoir, as a read, is helped along considerably by the fact Howard is a writer to begin with. The pacing is excellent, with an opening that ensures the reader will stay riveted. She paints vivid settings of working-class rural California, the fitness- and latter-disco-era of the 1980's, the sweaty formality of the weddings (and re-weddings) of her parents' new respective partners, a plodding and desperately fumbling, excessively journaled existence through college, and many more. She sets her story (actually, stories) to the soundtrack of Rod Stewart, her father's favorite performer. This is another tactic that could've gone awry into insufferable, but the author keeps a light touch with it that keeps it from treacly soundtrack to the poignantly background.
There is an element, of course, of tantalizing mystery: after all, we don't know who killed her father. In her decision as an adult to write about the experience, to somehow cleanse herself in some way, she works the case again. A weave of clues (her stepmother's possible deception, her shadowy brother, or any number of other parties shrouded in the shadows) drag her in different and yet the same directions, reopening her trauma (not just of her father's death but of the rocky periods that followed) and posing more. While this might have ended the book (or had the book dribble off) for some authors, it is in the event the author realizes she's doing more harm to herself than good (and thus, violating her father's wishes) in working such a difficult case (and having no professional "in"s, training, or experience) that she reaches the aforementioned epiphany of feeling free to walk away from her sleuthing. We might profess to know what it's like to lose a family member in a situation like this, particularly when it comes to the "correct" way to honor his or her death, but the author offers a rather stark inside look that might convince you otherwise.
Really, for all the talk of this being "more a memoir than a true crime book" and thus, for "memoir fans", it's possibly a bit of required reading for those (such as myself) fascinated by true crime documentation. It's cliched, however true, to say that it's easy to slip into the clinical, to forget that for each corpse, for each victim (and thus each tally), there is a life outside the untimely end, and a family and loved ones that (presumably) mourn. Howard's book is by no means the only memoir of its kind (a survivor's story of true crime) out there. But her approach and her skill make it notable for the ease with which she can make all too imaginable the various struggles of such a loss. This book can chill in a way perhaps even the most graphic crime scene photos cannot.
Notable: Unlike another memoir with a particularly unflattering portrait of a stepmother, I was unable to find any kind of response or reaction from Rachel Howard's prime suspect throughout the book (although she makes a point to offer an afterword wherein she attests that "I cannot assert, nor is it my intention to assert, that either my father's third wife, Sherrie, or her brother, Steve Serrano, was involved in my father's murder or any attempt to cover it up." pg 273) to the memoir.
Title: The Lost Night: A Daughter's Search for the Truth of Her Father's Murder by Rachel Howard
Details: Copyright 2005, Dutton Books
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "On the night of June 22, 1986, ten-year-old Rachel Howard woke to a disturbing sight: pools of blood on the hallway carpet and a glimpse of her father clutching his stabbed throat. Stan Howard died minutes later, and his bizarre small-town murder was never solved. Rachel's father was thirty-two, a laid-back, handsome man who loved the music of Rod Stewart and had no known enemies. Faced with her family's shock, Rachel decided she would cope the only way she knew how: By keeping silent and trying to pretend the murder had never happened.
Now, seventeen years later and recently engaged, Rachel attempts to uncover for herself what happened that night. Finally reconnecting with her father's family, she sorts through her relatives' memories of his death and presses the less-than-helpful detectives. Still bewildered, she seeks the only other two people present at the murder: her former stepmother and stepbrother, neither of whom she has seen since her father's funeral. The result is a tender portrait of a father and a keen investigation of memory, truth, and how a family moves on from a tragedy for which they may never find answers."
Why I Wanted to Read It: This was mentioned on an episode of my current obsession, This American Life (link goes to the specific episode). The premise was fascinating so I figured I'd give it a try.
How I Liked It: The book has a unique hook that's undersold on the cover although it's played up (to a degree) by the author's appearance on This American Life: this isn't your typical victim memoir. Howard, unlike James Elroy, is actually vindicated when she's told the case is pretty much unsolvable. She goes into the fact that the crime has already defined her life so much as it is and she never pictured herself as the crime-solving bereaved daughter, out for vengeance. While such a premise (the freedom NOT to pursue the killer of a loved one) in a memoir could get obnoxious for a number of reasons (self-righteousness high on the list), Howard actually uses her decision to paint a staggeringly accessible portrait of grief and horror. She makes the experience far more tangible (and horrific) to the average person than (I'd venture) any true crime novel.
The memoir, as a read, is helped along considerably by the fact Howard is a writer to begin with. The pacing is excellent, with an opening that ensures the reader will stay riveted. She paints vivid settings of working-class rural California, the fitness- and latter-disco-era of the 1980's, the sweaty formality of the weddings (and re-weddings) of her parents' new respective partners, a plodding and desperately fumbling, excessively journaled existence through college, and many more. She sets her story (actually, stories) to the soundtrack of Rod Stewart, her father's favorite performer. This is another tactic that could've gone awry into insufferable, but the author keeps a light touch with it that keeps it from treacly soundtrack to the poignantly background.
There is an element, of course, of tantalizing mystery: after all, we don't know who killed her father. In her decision as an adult to write about the experience, to somehow cleanse herself in some way, she works the case again. A weave of clues (her stepmother's possible deception, her shadowy brother, or any number of other parties shrouded in the shadows) drag her in different and yet the same directions, reopening her trauma (not just of her father's death but of the rocky periods that followed) and posing more. While this might have ended the book (or had the book dribble off) for some authors, it is in the event the author realizes she's doing more harm to herself than good (and thus, violating her father's wishes) in working such a difficult case (and having no professional "in"s, training, or experience) that she reaches the aforementioned epiphany of feeling free to walk away from her sleuthing. We might profess to know what it's like to lose a family member in a situation like this, particularly when it comes to the "correct" way to honor his or her death, but the author offers a rather stark inside look that might convince you otherwise.
Really, for all the talk of this being "more a memoir than a true crime book" and thus, for "memoir fans", it's possibly a bit of required reading for those (such as myself) fascinated by true crime documentation. It's cliched, however true, to say that it's easy to slip into the clinical, to forget that for each corpse, for each victim (and thus each tally), there is a life outside the untimely end, and a family and loved ones that (presumably) mourn. Howard's book is by no means the only memoir of its kind (a survivor's story of true crime) out there. But her approach and her skill make it notable for the ease with which she can make all too imaginable the various struggles of such a loss. This book can chill in a way perhaps even the most graphic crime scene photos cannot.
Notable: Unlike another memoir with a particularly unflattering portrait of a stepmother, I was unable to find any kind of response or reaction from Rachel Howard's prime suspect throughout the book (although she makes a point to offer an afterword wherein she attests that "I cannot assert, nor is it my intention to assert, that either my father's third wife, Sherrie, or her brother, Steve Serrano, was involved in my father's murder or any attempt to cover it up." pg 273) to the memoir.