A Better Ending

A compulsively readable true crime story about a brother’s research into the mysterious life and death of his sister who supposedly killed herself in 1974.

With shrewd and calculating investigative skill, first time author, James Whitfield Thomson intimately explores the tragic, sudden death of his sister and how her death impacted the fate of his family and his own life in his spellbinding memoir, A Better Ending. 

Thomson’s sister Eileen, the youngest of three siblings, was 15 months younger than the author. She was always “bright and bubbly.” However, in 1974, 27-year-old, married and childless Eileen, shot herself—what was deemed a self-inflicted firearm wound to her heart. Her husband, Vic, her high school sweetheart--a policeman in San Bernardino, Calif.--was home at the time of the shooting. Due to the shattering nature of the family’s catatonic-like grief, and the fact that Vic was a police officer and his mother was also “the best friend” (of Thomson’s mother, the family took, as gospel, Vic’s version of events and official police statements regarding Eileen’s deemed suicide.

 

Decades later, after his parents and his only remaining sibling, a brother, had all died, Thomson felt supernaturally compelled to revisit Eileen’s death. (Thomson, an aspiring writer, initially set out to fictionalize Eileen’s story. But while digging for details, he unearthed unsettling discrepancies in the official narrative. Thomson decided to hire a private detective and chose to write Eileen’s story from his own personal perspective.

 

Eileen was rarely spoken of after her death, as the Thomson family was overwhelmed with sadness and guilt for not “having saved” her. But Eileen’s presence becomes palpable again when Thomson and the private investigator evaluate police and ballistic reports, cull witness testimonies, and interview relatives, friends, and coworkers of Eileen’s to gain more insight. Over the course of many years, Thomson unearths harrowing, conflicting details that reveal questionable gaps in the official story and “choppy, slipshod and misdirected” evidence collection and police reporting. All of this calls into question the actual nature of Eileen’s death while raising suspicions about Vic. Thomson’s labyrinthine quest to find the truth eerily coalesces in 2005, when he has a sit-down meeting with his now estranged, thrice-married brother-in-law.

 

Thomson’s meticulously recreated timeline perfects an emotionally intensifying chronology that probes a dark, suspenseful--chillingly sad--story. In the end, the arduous path that Thomson travels to unravel the mystery of his sister’s life and ineffable death urges him toward enlightenment, acceptance, and healing.

 

A Better Ending: A Brother’s Twenty-Year Quest to Uncover the Truth About His Sister’s Death by James Whitfield Thomson

Avid Reader Press/Simon and Schuster, $28.99 hardcover, 304 pages, 9781668062869

Publishing Date: March 25, 2025

Purchase this title on Bookshop.org

 

A condensed version of this review was published on Shelf Awareness (March 28, 2025). Link HERE to read that review.

 

The Speckled Beauty

Famed serial memoirist Rick Bragg shares a beguiling story of his quest to tame an exasperating, yet utterly lovable, stray dog.

Pulitzer Prize-winning memoirist Rick Bragg (The Best Cook in the World; My Southern Journey) grew out of rural Southern poverty, but the spirit of his storytelling has made him--and legions of readers--rich beyond measure. In The Speckled Beauty, he recalls how an aggressive, one-eyed stray dog, a wayward Australian shepherd, bolted into Bragg's life when he was down and out.

 

Bragg--then 60 years old--had retreated to Calhoun County, Ala., to live and work in his elderly mother's basement. He was there to assist during the pandemic, and he was also recovering from serious complications after battling non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The unruly dog with speckled markings bounded into Bragg's life and stuck around. Bragg's older brother, Sam, found him to be a pitiful stray with "the attention span of a tick on a hot rock," implying, "A dog like this, wild for so long, would only bring woe." But Bragg, who had always admired the breed, takes up training "Speck" as a cause. The exasperating, fearless dog chronically tests his patience ("The dog would not back down from a rattlesnake"), but he ultimately charms Bragg, his mother and even his skeptical brother with laughable antics: "How could you not love a dog with a toilet-seat halo around his head?" And, Bragg claims, "My dog would battle me to death over the last cold tater tot."

 

Amid dark days, bright Speck shows up at just the right time. How fortunate for readers that the joy of his presence--enhanced by the wit and wisdom of Bragg's inimitable prose--will resonate far beyond the Bragg homestead.

 

The Speckled Beauty by Rick Bragg

Knopf (Doubleday Books), $26.00 hardcover, 9780525658818, 256 pages

Publication Date: September 21, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (September 24, 2021), link HERE

Three Dreamers: A Memoir of Family

An incredibly moving memoir about three women who greatly influenced the life of notable suspense novelist and screenwriter Lorenzo Carcaterra.

Suspense novelist and screenwriter Lorenzo Carcaterra (Payback; Sleepers) shares an intimate, true story about three, strong-willed, determined women who "saved" his life. Carcaterra--"the son of an ex-con and a housewife who spoke only Italian [who] grew up in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan"--was raised watching his mother trapped in an abusive, loveless, impoverished marriage to a man who had murdered his first wife. When he was 14, Carcaterra's mother sent him to Ischia, Italy, to spend the summer with his maternal grandmother, Nonna Maria, and other relatives. The trip proved to be a watershed.

Nonna Maria--wise, dignified and of great resilience--becomes a bedrock, championing her sensitive grandson, who has storytelling aspirations. Upon returning to the U.S., Carcaterra grows determined to forge a writing career, though his mother, Raffaela, belittles his goal. Steeped in misery, Raffaela--a widow whose second marriage is to Carcaterra's volatile father--often resents her son for being his bullying father's offspring. Dutiful, devoted Carcaterra, however, stands by his mother through some cruel, searing rejections. When Carcaterra meets Susan, an editor and coworker at the New York Daily News, he finds a soulmate whose love and support help turn the tide. Carcaterra finally launches his novel-writing career and the couple build a beautiful, sadly shortened, life together.

Many heart-wrenching incidents pervade the traumatic landscape of Carcaterra's life. But the richness of his forthright storytelling gives tender form to sadness and loss, shaping it into a deeply moving narrative about hard-fought familial love and forgiveness.

 

Three Dreamers: A Memoir of Family by Lorenzo Carcaterra

Ballantine Books, $28.00 Hardcover, 9780593156711, 240 pages

Publication Date: April 26, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (April 30, 2021), link HERE

Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love

An eloquent memoir that explores personal and universal issues of paternity, genetics, science, ethics and truth.

Through nine books, Dani Shapiro has mined her own experiences, trying to find meaning in events that have shaped her life. Shapiro's ongoing literary narrative continues with Inheritance, an unflinching, deeply personal account of how a DNA ancestry test irrevocably altered her life and the familiarity therein. The shocking results forced Shapiro to question her identity and everything she believed about herself and her family history over 54 years of living.

Shapiro grew up an observant Orthodox Jew shaped by her parents and a large "dynastic clan" in New Jersey. Religion and her spiritual life became the bedrock of her existence until she ultimately rebelled, breaking with Judaism while in college. When Shapiro was in her 20s, a catastrophic car accident claimed the life of her father, whom she deeply loved and respected. It also left her mother afflicted by years of related injuries until her death. Shapiro eventually reconnected with the traditions of her Jewish heritage after she became a mother herself.

Several years ago, Shapiro decided on a lark to have her DNA analyzed. The report ultimately revealed a life-altering truth: Shapiro's father was not her biological parent. Relentless in her tenacity, she goes in search of the man who was. She grapples with the secrecy of her parents and the meaning of family while seeking to reconcile the consequences of this revelation.

Shapiro (Hourglass) is always an intellectual, analytical storyteller. The engaging way in which she renders the suspenseful details of this forthright, meaningful odyssey will keep readers totally enthralled.  

Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro

Knopf, $24.95, Hardcover, 9781524732714, 272 pages

Publication Date: January 15, 2019

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (January 18, 2019), link HERE