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New edition and book signing
The Boys on the Tracks, my first book dealing with unsolved murders and public corruption in Arkansas, has been out of print for about five years. Now, for the first time, it is available in a trade paperback edition.
The story begins with the deaths of two teenagers in Saline County, Arkansas, an area just south of Little Rock. The medical examiner ruled that they died in the middle of the night from injuries sustained when they were run over by a freight train. The train crew told police that the boys did not stir as the locomotive bore down on them. The medical examiner told the boys parents that this was because both boys had lain across the tracks and fallen into a marijuana-induced stupor.
From that dismal moment on, the story of the investigation into the boys’ deaths took one shocking turn after another. My account of those events is told from the point of view of Linda Ives, the mother of Kevin Ives, one of the two boys who died. At her insistence, a second autopsy was eventually performed. It revealed clear evidence of murder. When a grand jury was impaneled to seek answers, more killing was all that resulted.
I will be signing copies of The Boys on the Tracks and Devil’s Knot at the Hastings bookstore in Benton, Arkansas, the Saline County seat, starting at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Mar. 1, 2008.
