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Title: Shot in the Heart by Mikal Gilmore ISBN: 0-385-47800-3 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 01 August, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.79 (42 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A BOOK FROM THE HEART
Comment: Once upon a time, there was a family named Gilmore. This family had four children: Frank, Jr.; Gaylen; Gary; and Mikal, the youngest. Gary became famous in 1977 when he challenged the federal and state capital punishment machinery and forced them to carry out the death sentence imposed upon him for the murders of two young Mormon men in Utah. He wanted death by firing squad and would settle for nothing less. Even the efforts of civil rights groups on his behalf impressed him not: he wanted to die and he scornfully dismissed their legal maneuverings. On January 17, 1977, Gary Gilmore got what he wanted: he was executed by a Utah firing squad, thus ushering in America's active revival of the death penalty.
Yet, Gary Gilmore was a person shaped by the events of his formative years and by the events which took place in his family. The Gilmore family was not a fairy-tale family: rather, it defined the word "disfunctional". The father, Frank, Sr., beat the mother, Bessie, in front of the children on more than one occasion. He beat the boys, too, reserving the worst of the white-hot heat of his inner anger for Gary. Gary's violent acts, and the fate he suffered, prove once more that it is the children who often pay for the sins of the parents. In this case, a child paid the ultimate price.
Today, two of the brothers are living and two are dead (Gaylen died in 1971 from complications from a stabbing in Chicago). In Shot In The Heart, Gary's brother, Mikal, a well-known writer for Rolling Stone magazine, breaks the silence and tells the story of the family's violent, abnormal history. With brutal honesty and candid, painful insight, he speaks for both the living and the dead.
Psychologists say that people doing so-called "grief work" following the death of a loved one must "tell the tale" of the loved one's life over and over in order to come to terms with their loss and what that loss means for those left behind. Mikal Gilmore neither condones the players in this tragic story, nor rationalizes the things they do to one another. He simply tells the tales not only of Gary, but also Frank, Sr., Bessie and the other children, with dignity and compassion, while the sorrow and pain bleed through every word, every page. One is tempted to think that the events related here are the product of some highly creative and immensely gifted writer and, in fact, they are: however, they are all true. Aye, there's the rub.
If there is anything good to be produced from this horrific family tree, it is the author himself. Despite his past, he emerged a survivor with a rare and shining talent - the ability to make you feel each word he writes, whether his subject is himself or another family member. Shot In The Heart should be required reading and I dare anyone to put it down until the last ghostly memory has been read on the last page of the last chapter.
The text is augmented by family photographs and conversations with other players in the saga of Gary Gilmore, including his girlfriend, Nicole. The most touching aspect, however, is the inclusion of some of Gary's own artwork, which often depicted children with huge, mournful eyes staring into space. There is something missing about these children; it's as though they are searching for something they don't have. Self-portraits? Undoubtedly.
Rating: 5
Summary: Mikal's Inferno.
Comment: This book is a masterpiece because it resists the temptation to deconstruct & analyze to death the sociopathology of Gary Gilmore. Maybe that's because Mikal is his brother & he, like it or not, lived with Gary as family & not as a TV news item like the rest of us. However, this book is NOT an apology for Gary's crimes. It is a beautifully crafted work of search for identity & truth among barbed wire.
Mikal Gilmore has made this book not only readable but RE-readable due to the fact that he never dwells on any simplistic excuse or theory for his brother's crimes. It is both empathetic & unsentimental at once. Mikal does this by showing how his, at first, ordinary attempt to find out what went wrong with his brother turns into an investigation, deconstruction & then meditation on family mythology. Doing so, he touches deeply on how prejudice & delusion create one's personal environment while still justifying an individual's responsibility to come to terms with their legacy despite their rage.
Shot In The Heart* is about family dysfunction, but it bravely & fiercely rises above the talk show weepiness of normal discussion over this subject. This is because Mikal goes looking for himself & his part in the affair with tremendous personal courage. He becomes not only a highly credible narrator, but an admirable human being before our mind's eye.
I would liken this book to the inverse of The Godfather saga. It tells just as deep and moving a story about family and American experience, but from the beaten end. Where Michael Corleone in The Godfather gains material power in society but loses his soul & connection with family, Mikal Gilmore wonders about the loss of family but reconnects with his own soul by digging for truth as if he is the family Diogenes looking for one good man in the darkness with his lamp.
Even though it is non-fiction, Shot In The Heart retains the aura of a good mystery. Mikal keeps your interest taut throughout the book by following family "clues" in the form of myths passed on from generation to next. Just when he gets close to his quarry of what really happened to Gary, we find that we may have been trailing the wrong lead and begin a new avenue down which to turn. This isn't disappointing, but illuminating & bracing, crossing paths with some of the institutions & denizens of America & whether they played any part in it.
Ultimately, Mikal places the responsibility where it belongs: in the hearts of people who were there, including Gary & himself. However, he is also wise enough to show how complicated & entangled those hearts can be and how brutality can damage them. This is why this book rises above so many of the murder analyses genre. It emphasizes welfare of the soul of an individual as our most important asset of & hope for humanity.
I often find myself rereading this book. Its prose has come to live in me and how I think of the stories I tell to others.
* Note: those who've seen the TV adaption have only seen 2% of this incredible book.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Chilling,compelling story that can't be put down!
Comment: It took many years for writer Mikal Gilmore,youngest brother of Gary Gilmore,to decide to tell the story of the Gilmore family.Grappling with haunting ghosts of his past to try to dig deep to unravel the mystery of the crimes within his family,starting with his father,brothers Gaylen,& Gary;he tells a compelling story,that makes the reader hunger for more.
The book starts out with Mikal delving into the history of the Mormon religion to illustrate some points about his Mother's background,& the practice of blood atonement being the ultimate forgiveness of sins.The rest of the book is a chronicle of lives of his family members beginning with his mother's roots & upbringing,her meeting Frank Gilmore Sr.,& the events that unfurled during their marriage & as their boys came to be: Frank Jr.,Gary,Gaylen,& Mikal.It's a haunting story of crime,family violence,distance,& Mikal's eventual coming to terms with his roots.
A good majority of the story is about Mikal's brother Gary.Eleven years senior from Mikal,hence the distanced relationship as Gary spent many years in a reform school for boys,& lengthy periods in jail,before his release in April 1976.It was the summer of 1976 that Gary came unglued - following the breakup of his girlfriend Nicole, in a killing spree,on two subsequent nights that took the lives of two young Mormon men.Gary was captured the next day,& sentenced in October of that year to the death penalty which he refused all appeals for & lobbied for the expediency of the sentence,following a 16 year moratorium of the death penalty which was reinstated that year.
Mikal opens a pandoras box as he goes back to that time to talk about the murders,& his visits with Gary on death row.
This book was beautifully written,sensitive,& compelling.It was difficult for me to put it down.It explained a great deal about how a negative, violent family environment can play a role in criminal behaviour.Gary once called himself 'The Eternal Recidivist',& after reading about some of the goings on in that house,it was easy to see how he & his brother Gaylen got mixed up in criminal activity,especially with a criminal father.
After reading 'The Executioner's Song' by Norman Mailer,the chronicle of the events of the summer of 1976 to the execution of Gilmore in 1977,I thought this book was a good follow up & a must read.Mikal also extolts the virtues of Mailers book & recommend it as reading,as the book was a factual non judgemental account of his brother.
I give this book 2 thumbs up & highly recommend it!
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Title: The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer ISBN: 0375700811 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 28 April, 1998 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title:Shot in the Heart ASIN: B00005YUO2 Publisher: Warner Home Video Pub. Date: 01 June, 2004 List Price(USD): $19.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $13.99 |
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Title:Biography - Gary Gilmore ASIN: B000006QHE Publisher: A & E Entertainment Pub. Date: 07 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $19.95 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $19.95 |
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Title: The Stalking of Kristin: A Father Investigates the Murder of His Daughter by George, Jr. Lardner ISBN: 0451407318 Publisher: Onyx Books Pub. Date: January, 1997 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote ISBN: 0679745580 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 February, 1994 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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