by Alex Mar
“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.
“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.
Reviews-
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October 1, 2022
In The Long Reckoning, award-winning investigative journalist Black (The Good Neighbor) chronicles the efforts of U.S. veterans, scientists, and pacifists and their Vietnamese partners to compel the U.S. government to acknowledge the ongoing damage done by unexploded munitions and the toxic defoliant Agent Orange in Vietnam, particularly in the demilitarized zone. From notable U.S.-based Dutch writer/editor Buruma (The Churchill Complex), The Collaborators examines three figures seen as either heroes or traitors during World War II: Hasidic Jew Friedrich Weinreb, who took money to save fellow Jews but betrayed some of them to the Gestapo; Manchu princess Kawashima Yoshiko, who spied for the Japanese secret police in China; and masseur Felix Kersten, who claimed to have talked Himmler out of killing thousands. Oxford associate professor Healey's The Blazing World portrays 17th-century England as a turbulent society undergoing revolutionary change. A professor of politics and global health at Queen Mary University of London, Kennedy argues in Pathogenesis that it was not human guts and ingenuity but the power of disease-delivering microbes that has driven human history, from the end of the Neanderthals to the rise of Christianity and Islam to the deadly consequences of European colonialism (75,000-copy first printing). Continuing in the vein of his New York Times best-selling The Princess Spy, Loftis introduces us to Corrie ten Boom, The Watchmaker's Daughter, who helped her family hide Jews and refugees from the Gestapo during World War II (100,000-copy first printing). Mar's Seventy Times Seven chronicles Black 15-year-old Paula Cooper's murder of septuagenarian white woman Ruth Pelke in a violent home invasion in 1985 Gary, IN; her subsequent death sentence; and what happened when Pelke's grandson forgave her. Journalist/consultant Roberts fully reveals the Untold Power of Woodrow Wilson's wife Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, who effectively acted as president when her husband was incapacitated. A best seller in the UK when it was published in 2021, Sanghera's Empireland--an exploration of the legacy of British imperialism in the contemporary world--has been contextualized for U.S. audiences and carries an introduction by Marlon James. In Benjamin Banneker and Us, Webster explores the life of her forbear, the Black mathematician and almanac writer who surveyed Washington, DC, for Thomas Jefferson, and his descendants to highlight how structural racism continues to shape our understanding of lineage and family.
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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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. -
February 15, 2023
A brutal murder ends in reconciliation--at least of a sort. "Where's the money, bitch?" According to court records, that's what Paula Cooper, a Black teenager, shouted as she stabbed an elderly White woman in Gary, Indiana, in 1985. Arrested the next day, Cooper entered a system of juvenile justice that, as Mar notes, is overwhelmingly populated by minority members, as was true in the case of the Black perpetrator and her three accomplices. The judge agonized: "He says he's been asked many times over the past few months for the age at which juveniles should be charged as adults, and he does not know the answer." Two accomplices received terms of 35 and 60 years, and the third, who did not enter the house but essentially organized the crime, was sentenced to 25 years in a plea deal. Cooper, at 15, became the youngest woman ever sentenced to death. Multiple appeals followed, even as public sentiment in the Reagan era turned increasingly in favor of the death penalty. Meanwhile, the victim's grandson, at first aching for vengeance, gradually took the view that capital punishment was wrong and began a long, lonely campaign to fight against it, including holding vigils at executions. Mar's story has a redemptive conclusion of sorts: Cooper was released on parole after serving nearly 20 years after the grandson petitioned the judge to do so. Against the grandson's hope, however, she found no way to "reenter society." In the Trump era, the court system has turned actively pro-death penalty, with Attorney General William Barr reviving federal executions and the conservative Supreme Court ruling, in one case, that in cases of homicide, sentences of life without parole are permissible even for a juvenile, "without the need to rule on whether that young person has a hope of rehabilitation." A probing examination of the intersection of race, crime, and punishment.COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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February 17, 2023
Mar (Witches of America) interweaves historical background into the narrative to tell the story of four Black girls, ages 14-16, who skipped school and murdered 78-year-old Ruth Pelke, a white woman, during a burglary in Gary, IN, in 1985. The girls were soon captured, and DA Jack Crawford requested the death penalty. At that time, Indiana law allowed the death penalty for those as young as 10 years old. Paula Cooper, 15, believed to be the ring leader, received the death sentence, whereas the others received 25-, 35-, and 60-year prison terms. The book details how Pelke's grandson Bill, who once favored the death penalty, broke from the family, became Cooper's ardent supporter, and publicly opposed the death penalty. Cooper's young age provoked an international crusade to commute her death sentence; it eventually was commuted in 1988, after the Supreme Court ruled in Thompson v. Oklahoma that states cannot execute juveniles under the age of 16. Cooper eventually served more than 26 years in prison before being released and died by suicide two years later. VERDICT The book's title is a biblical reference about forgiveness. Well-written, well-researched, and worth being added to a true-crime collection.--Michael Sawyer
Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Starred review from February 1, 2023
On a May afternoon in 1985 in Gary, Indiana, three girls aged 14-to-16 entered the home of 78-year-old white woman Ruth Pelke, who taught Bible classes, and stabbed the woman to death before ransacking her house and stealing her car. Once the murder was discovered, the girls, all Black, quickly confessed. When Paula Cooper was the only one sentenced to death, news of the high-profile capital punishment of a 15-year-old reached Pope John Paul II and set in motion a state-, nation-, and even worldwide reckoning with the sentencing of juveniles to Death Row. Ruth's grandson Bill Pelke, meanwhile, experienced a vision while working high-up in a crane at Gary's Bethlehem Steel plant: Ruth crying on behalf of her killers, asking her family to forgive them. Chronicling Paula's life before and after her sentencing, Bill's pro-reconciliation and anti-death-penalty advocacy work, Gary history, and U.S. capital punishment policies and practices, Mar's (Witches of America, 2015) expansive, humanitarian legal history is also an investigation of belief, from the intrinsic yet seemingly unachievable goal for justice to be clear and comprehensible to the Christian faith that propelled Bill Pelke and many more. This is an unsettling look at the recent past and a profoundly affecting read.COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
