A peaceful summer night is shattered by gunfire as an unseen assailant tries to murder police officer John Busby. Though horribly wounded, Busby survives. But the perpetrator remains at large, meaning neither Busby, nor his wife, nor their three children are safe. In separate chapters John and his daughter Cylin, who was nine at the time, recount the story of that year. John writes graphically, and movingly, of his wounds, his pain, his multiple surgeries, and his rage. Cylin tells their story from a child's point of view, sharing vivid memories of confusion, loss of friends, and the struggle to build a new life. Together, father and daughter craft an unforgettable picture of fear, of police corruption, and of a malignant thug who no one dares to cross. Yet their story is also one of redemption and recovery, and ultimately of hope and healing.
1 of 1 copy available
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
January 10, 2013 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781936223312
- File size: 247346 KB
- Duration: 08:35:18
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Languages
- English
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Levels
- Lexile® Measure: 940
- Text Difficulty: 4-6
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Reviews
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Starred review from September 1, 2008
No one with even a marginal interest in true crime writing should miss this page-turner, by turns shocking and almost unbearably sad. In 1979, in an underworld-style hit, a gunman shot John Busby, a policeman in Cape Cod; a fluke saved John's life, but he was permanently disfigured and disabled, and the family placed under 24-hour protection. Eventually the family went into hiding in Tennessee, but arguably their “disappearance” takes place long before they move—as John and his daughter, Cylin, alternately narrate, readers can see how the shooting erased the family's sense of themselves. John is consumed with anger at the police's refusal to pursue the likeliest suspects (“and planned to stay angry until I got back at the bastards who did this to me”); Cylin, then nine, is baffled as she and her two older brothers attract unwelcome attention (“Everyone thinks your dad is going to die,” a cousin tells her. “But you're lucky—you don't have to go to school”) and are later forsaken as classmates' parents deem friendship with them too risky. Where John's chapters provide the grim facts, it is Cylin's authentically childlike perspective that, in revealing the cost to her innocence, renders the tragic experience most searingly. Ages 14-up.
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