A Rip in Heaven: A Memoir of Murder and its Aftermath FROM THE PUBLISHER
When my parents packed my brother, sister and me into the family van and drove us to Missouri for Spring Break, we brought our entirely imagined city-hardness with us. The hard truth that we were about to learn was that, in fact, we weren't tough kids at all. Our life in the city had not prepared us for anything. Nothing could prepare us for this.
A Rip in Heaven is Jeanine Cummins's story of a night in April 1991, when her two cousins, Julie and Robin Kerry, and her brother, Tom, were assaulted on the Chain of Rocks Bridge that spans the Mississippi River just outside of St. Louis. When, after a harrowing ordeal, Tom managed to escape the attackers and flag down help, he thought the nightmare would soon be over. He couldn't have been more wrong. Tom, his sister Jeanine, and their entire family were just at the beginning of a horrific odyssey through the aftermath of a violent crime, a world of shocking betrayal, endless heartbreak, and utter disillusionment. It was a trial by fire from which no one would emerge unscathed.
This is one family's intimate, immediate, and unforgettable story of what victims can suffer long after they should be safe.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
On the night of April 4, 1991, during a spring-break family vacation to St. Louis, Cummins's 19-year-old brother, Tom, and his two female cousins were attacked while walking on the abandoned Old Chain of Rocks Bridge. During the attack, the girls were raped; afterward, all three were pushed off the bridge by the four assailants. Tom survived; the girls did not. Cummins presents a mesmerizing, highly balanced memoir of the events, writing in the third person to give readers "an intimate knowledge of each facet of the story." She introduces her own family, referring to herself by her childhood nickname, and then does the same for each of the assailants, thoughtfully painting an in-depth portrait of each character without ever passing judgment. Moreover, she takes what could be cold, dry factual information from "court documents, police records, electronic media" and her own interviews and deftly weaves them into a compelling, novel-like account. She explores the family's initial horror over the police holding Tom as a suspect for this crime that made national headlines. (One of the attackers wound up with a 30-year plea; the others are currently on death row.) For someone so closely related to a crime victim to strike such a fine balance in chronicling it is a highly admirable feat. Cummins's noble account will ultimately draw readers into all sides of the story. 8 pages of photos not seen by PW. (On sale June 1) Forecast: Cummins is a part of Penguin Group's sales department. The house will support her with a national media campaign, NPR affiliate campaign and St. Louis media and in-store author appearances. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A wrenching tale of a notorious murder's long echoes for its survivors. Cummins terms her debut "both a true crime [story] and a memoir," intending it to celebrate the lives of her young cousins, Julie and Robin Kerry, killed during a chance encounter in the summer of 1991. Traveling with her family from Washington, D.C., to vacation with relatives in St. Louis, Cummins ruefully recalls, "I thought I was tough." On their last night in St. Louis, her older brother Tom snuck out with Julie and Robin; the rebellious 18-year-old rookie firefighter had developed a deep emotional bond with his cousins, both lovers of poetry and social justice. The trio went to the decrepit Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, where they ran into four local young men whose friendly demeanor quickly turned savage. The men beat Tom, raped Julie and Robin, then pushed all three into the raging Mississippi River. Only Tom survived, and his family's horror was compounded when investigators inexplicably charged him with his cousins' deaths. Tom was held for several grueling days before a flashlight found at the scene led authorities to the real killers, who quickly implicated one another. The least culpable accepted a 30-year plea; the others received death sentences. Identifying herself by her childhood nickname "Tink," Cummins re-creates these dark events in an omniscient third-person narrative that lends the tale grim efficiency. Although her prose is occasionally purple ("Tink's blood turned to ice and the room started to spin out from under her feet"), she succeeds overall in acquainting the reader with the horrific toll exacted by proximity to violence. The conclusion, which examines how the cruelest of the murderersbecame a cause celebre thanks to his youth, offers astringent commentary on our society's fascination with killers, who in media coverage often overshadow their victims. Cummins's memoir does a good job of retrieving the lives of Julie and Robin from that obscurity. Apt tribute to family endurance in the face of grievous loss.
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