On a summer night in 2009, three lives intersected in one American neighborhood. Two people newly in love--Teresa Butz and Jennifer Hopper, who spent years trying to find themselves and who eventually found each other--woke up to find Isaiah Kalebu, twenty-three years old and with a history of mental illness, standing over them with a knife. In this compassionate and riveting account of a murder in Seattle, Eli Sanders, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the crime, offers a portrait in microcosm of the state of mental health care in America--as well as an inspiring story of love and forgiveness. Culminating in Kalebu's slide toward violence--observed by family members, police, mental health workers, lawyers, and judges, but stopped by no one.
Contents
Prologue: South Rose Street -- Teresa and Jennifer -- Capture -- Isaiah -- Danger to self and others -- Threshold of competence -- The trial -- Epilogue: The river.
