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“Alex Mar’s bold yet sensitive account of one of America’s youngest death row inmates—and the people whose lives she forever changed—is intimately reported, deeply moving, and unforgettable.” —Robert Kolker, New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road “An absorbing work of social history and a story about the mystery and miracle of forgiveness. This is a book of awesome scope, and it deserves to be read with attention.” —Hilary Mantel, Booker Prize–winning author of the Wolf Hall trilogy A masterful, revelatory work of literary non-fiction about a teenage girl’s shocking crime—and its extraordinary aftermath On a spring afternoon in 1985 in Gary, Indiana, a fifteen-year-old girl kills an elderly woman in a violent home invasion. In a city with a history of racial tensions and white flight, the girl, Paula Cooper, is Black, and her victim, Ruth Pelke, is white and a beloved Bible teacher. The press swoops in. When Paula is sentenced to death, no one decries the impending execution of a tenth grader. But the tide begins to shift when the victim’s grandson Bill forgives the girl, against the wishes of his family, and campaigns to spare her life. This tragedy in a midwestern steel town soon reverberates across the United States and around the world—reaching as far away as the Vatican—as newspapers cover the story on their front pages and millions sign petitions in support of Paula. As Paula waits on death row, her fate sparks a debate that not only animates legal circles but raises vital questions about the value of human life: What are we demanding when we call for justice? Is forgiveness an act of desperation or of profound bravery? As Bill and Paula’s friendship deepens, and as Bill discovers others who have chosen to forgive after terrible violence, their story asks us to consider what radical acts of empathy we might be capable of. In Seventy Times Seven, Alex Mar weaves an unforgettable narrative of an act of violence and its aftermath. This is a story about the will to live—to survive, to grow, to change—and about what we are willing to accept as justice. Tirelessly researched and told with intimacy and precision, this book brings a haunting chapter in the history of our criminal justice system to astonishing life.
“Alex Mar’s bold yet sensitive account of one of America’s youngest death row inmates—and the people whose lives she forever changed—is intimately reported, deeply moving, and unforgettable.” —Robert Kolker, New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road “An absorbing work of social history and a story about the mystery and miracle of forgiveness. This is a book of awesome scope, and it deserves to be read with attention.” —Hilary Mantel, Booker Prize–winning author of the Wolf Hall trilogy A masterful, revelatory work of literary non-fiction about a teenage girl’s shocking crime—and its extraordinary aftermath On a spring afternoon in 1985 in Gary, Indiana, a fifteen-year-old girl kills an elderly woman in a violent home invasion. In a city with a history of racial tensions and white flight, the girl, Paula Cooper, is Black, and her victim, Ruth Pelke, is white and a beloved Bible teacher. The press swoops in. When Paula is sentenced to death, no one decries the impending execution of a tenth grader. But the tide begins to shift when the victim’s grandson Bill forgives the girl, against the wishes of his family, and campaigns to spare her life. This tragedy in a midwestern steel town soon reverberates across the United States and around the world—reaching as far away as the Vatican—as newspapers cover the story on their front pages and millions sign petitions in support of Paula. As Paula waits on death row, her fate sparks a debate that not only animates legal circles but raises vital questions about the value of human life: What are we demanding when we call for justice? Is forgiveness an act of desperation or of profound bravery? As Bill and Paula’s friendship deepens, and as Bill discovers others who have chosen to forgive after terrible violence, their story asks us to consider what radical acts of empathy we might be capable of. In Seventy Times Seven, Alex Mar weaves an unforgettable narrative of an act of violence and its aftermath. This is a story about the will to live—to survive, to grow, to change—and about what we are willing to accept as justice. Tirelessly researched and told with intimacy and precision, this book brings a haunting chapter in the history of our criminal justice system to astonishing life.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the coverOne
The Care of Children
One house of the many that make up a city: a pale-yellow house, an hour after sunup in Gary, Indiana. A woman lives here, on Wisconsin Street, with her two daughters. Rhonda is twelve, her sister Paula is nine. It is 1979.
Their mother-her name is Gloria-hustles them outside into the morning light, and then into the dark of the garage and the back seat of her red Chevy Vega. The girls are very young, and they are powerfully tired. They understand what their mother intends to do-she has kept them up all night softly talking then shouting then whimpering to them about where they'll be traveling together, about what must happen next-and they are no longer resistant.
With her daughters inside, Gloria tugs at the garage door until it slides down to meet the concrete. She slips into the driver's side, rolls down the windows, turns the key in the ignition: the engine gives off a deep, thrumming sound. Then she waits for them to close their eyes and fall into that steady rhythm; she can see their faces in the rearview mirror, small and brown and perfect. All three are still, their limbs grown heavy as if underwater.
The engine continues running; the minutes accumulate; the air thickens.
Outside the garage, the neighborhood is awakening. Inside the garage, the girls are passing into an unnatural sleep.
What Rhonda remembers next: she and Paula laying side by side on their bottom bunk, not knowing how they got there. They have not exited the world. Gloria is leaning over them, her daughters: they will be all right, she says. Just before leaving.
Rhonda does not know how much time has passed before she is able to move her body. She rises slowly. A letter is taped to the door, from their mother: She is finishing what she set out to do. Rhonda rushes to the kitchen and calls her aunt, who tells her to run, get their neighbor. Through the window, she thinks she sees exhaust seeping out from under the garage door, into the bright daylight.
Mr. Hollis drags Gloria out of the garage and lays her on her back on the lawn. He drops to his knees and with elbows locked, hand over hand, pushes hard on her chest. Again and again. The neighbor across the street, a nurse, rushes over and takes her turn trying to pump breath back into Gloria's body.
The ambulance arrives, and the fire department, and a medic becomes the third person in line to tend to Gloria. By now, Paula is standing outside, watching. Rhonda sees her younger sister grow hysterical at the sight of this stranger bearing down on their mother's chest, and Gloria not responding, not responding.
Something Rhonda will not forget: no one examines them, the girls. The firemen, the medics-no one so much as takes their pulse. When Gloria is swept off to the hospital, the sisters go stay with their aunt. When after a week their mother checks herself out early, no one asks any questions; when she comes to retrieve her daughters, no one stops her.
For years, Rhonda has said that she does not know what transformed her sister. But now she tells me, as if untangling the question aloud, that this was it. This must have been the start of a change in Paula. "Because you have to understand: We were all supposed to have been dead. That's what we were expecting, that's what we were hoping." But they were still alive. And what now-another day in the yellow house?
The house stands in Marshalltown, a subdivision of the Pulaski neighborhood, integrated by Black working-class families in the 1950s. Theirs is one of a collection of streets lined with neat, ranch-style homes, single-family, with small front yards.
...
Reviews-
Starred review from January 2, 2023 Journalist Mar (Witches of America) delivers an engrossing study of faith, forgiveness, and justice centered on the 1985 murder of a great-grandmother in Gary, Ind. Fifteen-year-old Paula Cooper, one of four teenage girls who invaded the home of Bible teacher Ruth Pelke and stole her car, was sentenced to death for the crime. Mar details the physical abuse Cooper endured from her father, her mother’s attempt to kill herself and her two daughters, and Cooper’s experiences being “passed from stranger to stranger” in foster homes and emergency shelters in the three years leading up to the murder. Juxtaposed with Cooper’s volatile childhood are snapshots of Pelke, who had taught one of the teenage girls and driven her to church. Other profile subjects include Jack Crawford, the prosecutor who chose to pursue the death penalty against Cooper, who confessed to stabbing Pelke more than 30 times; Bill Pelke, Ruth’s grandson, who publicly forgave Cooper for the crime; and Earline Rogers, a state legislator who spearheaded efforts to exempt juveniles younger than 16 from the death penalty in Indiana. Though Cooper’s sentence was commuted and she was released from prison in 2013, she died in an apparent suicide less than two years later. Deeply reported and vividly written, this is a harrowing and thought-provoking portrait of crime and punishment. Photos. Agent: Sarah Burnes, Gernert Co.
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