Early on an April morning, eighteen-year-old Billy Frank Gilley, Jr., killed his sleeping parents. Surprised in the act by his younger sister, Becky, he turned on her as well. Billy then climbed the stairs to the bedroom of his other sister, Jody, and said, "We're free." But is one ever free after an unredeemable act of violence? The Gilley family murders ended a lifetime of physical and mental abuse suffered by Billy and Jody at the hands of their parents. And it required each of the two survivors--one a convicted murderer, the other suddenly an orphan--to create a new identity, a new life.
In this mesmerizing book, bestselling writer Kathryn Harrison brilliantly uncovers the true story behind a shocking and unforgettable crime as she explores the impact of escalating violence and emotional abuse visited on the children of a deeply troubled family. With an artistry that recalls Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, and her own The Kiss, Harrison reveals the antecedents of the murders--of a crime of such violence that it had the power to sever past from present--and the consequences for Billy and for Jody. Weaving in meditations on her own experience of parental abuse, Harrison searches out answers to the question of how survivors of violent trauma shape a future when their lives have been divided into Before and After.
Based on interviews with Billy and Jody as well as with friends, police, and social workers involved in the case, While They Slept is Kathryn Harrison's unflinching inquiry into the dark heart of violence in an American family, and a personal quest to understand how young people go on after tragedy--to examine the extent as well as the limits of psychic resilience. The New York Times called Kathryn Harrison's The Kiss "a powerful piece of writing, a testament to evil and hope." The same could be said about While They Slept.
PRAISE FOR WHILE THEY SLEPT
"Harrison does a magnificent job of sorting through the heartbreak of a family tragedy. By adding insights into her own life, she brings us a little closer to understanding the resilience of the human spirit and the irrevocable damage and unforeseen consequences of child and sexual abuse." --USA Today
"The result of Harrison's masterful embellishment is a fascinating and comprehensive examination of the before and after of a brutal triple murder, of the cyclical nature of violence and of the tragic ineffectiveness of our social support systems...While They Slept does not provide the easy answers we hope to discover in 'just the facts,' but it offers instead the richer and more enduring illumination of 'the story.'" --L.A. Times
"Her telling brings moral clarity to the dark fate of a family: the daylight gaze of narrative itself as a form of empathy." --New York Times Book Review, cover review "A powerful account...This excellent book will be devoured by educators who try to come to grips with the lasting effects of the traumas of childhood." --Deseret Morning News
"Harrison offers careful research and obvious concern... While They Slept's real horror is in how many potential helpers were aware of the abuse and were unable to help. This is a heartbreaking read." --Rocky Mountain News
"Kathryn Harrison pulls the reader through the story of the 1984 triple murder in Medford--our own backyard--with such speed and excitement it feels like you're watching an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent...Harrison perfectly paces the...
Excerpts
Chapter One...
"Because you wanted to wear something your mother didn't approve of?" I ask Jody.
"No, the dressing-sexy-for-school thing happened much earlier, in fifth or sixth grade. By tenth grade it was all about looking punk. Ratting my hair, applying dark eye makeup, piercing my ears with safety pins. And all of that happened at school, in the girls' bathroom. At Kathy's it was just, you know, getting ready for school together. Me probably using the Mary Kay makeup she had because her mom sold it, whereas my makeup was bottom-drawer Fred Meyer lip gloss and Maybelline. Also, I was curling-iron challenged, and Kathy could get that perfect eighties feather in a way I couldn't."
I nod. Long, auburn, glossy: Jody's hair is the first thing I notice about her. The way she gathers it into one hand and pulls it forward in a thick rope over one shoulder-the image stays with me after our first meeting, I'm not sure why. Perhaps because it's a pretty gesture. Jody herself is pretty, with a heart-shaped face and hazel eyes, not much if any makeup. Dressed in dark pants and a denim jacket, high heels. When she talks, all the emphasis is in her voice. She speaks without using her hands, as I was taught, unsuccessfully, to do.
Nothing about Jody's appearance surprises me-I didn't, after all, have any idea what she looked like-but her physical presence is itself unsettling. The Jody I know is sixteen, a girl in a car with her brother, the two of them motionless. Petrified, as if the murders had been, like the head of a Gorgon, a sight that turned them to stone. For ten years I've known Jody not as a woman but as a character, one among the many in my head, images taken from books and movies, not so much people as ideas of people, whom I expect never to encounter in the flesh.
There was more to getting dressed at Kathy's than looking the way Jody wanted for school. It was easier in the house across the field. Kathy's parents weren't always fighting with each other or screaming at their children. Her mother didn't look for excuses to punish her daughter; she didn't throw things at Kathy or pin her down and blow cigarette smoke in her face just out of meanness. She didn't denigrate her children or act like reading was a waste of time, the way Jody's parents did. The fact that Jody spent so much of her life hidden behind the cover of a book was a source of conflict at home; her family understood her insatiable, nearly compulsive reading for what it was: escape, judgment. Jody would rather be anywhere than there, with them; she was just biding her time until she could walk out the door, old enough that the police wouldn't come after her and bring her back, as they did her brother when he ran away.
Kathy had brothers, but they were younger than Billy, thirteen and fourteen, and they were good kids, normal anyway. They didn't cause the kind of trouble Billy did-didn't get kicked out of Bible camp for smoking in the woods, didn't get arrested for breaking into cars or setting people's living rooms on fire. They didn't sneak into Kathy's room at night to put their hands between her legs.
After they got dressed that day, the girls rode the bus to Medford High, but, as Jody would tell Detective Richard Davis the morning after the murders, they never entered the building. "We went to Games People Play [a video arcade] for a while and then we went over to a guy's house. And we stayed there for a while and then we went to Pappy's and got potatoes and then we walked home."
Jody had skipped school before. According to Kathy Ackerson, interviewed in 1999 by a private investigator, Jody cared about her grades and made straight A's-"B's," Jody...
Reviews
New York Times Book Review...
"[Harrison's] telling brings moral clarity to the dark fate of a family: the daylight gaze of narrative itself as a form of empathy."
Washington Post Book World...
"A tale at once gothic and Greek, Freudian and Shakespearean, taboo and tragic."
USA Today...
"Magnificent . . . a darkly poignant study of survival."
Los Angeles Times...
"Masterful . . . a fascinating and comprehensive examination of the before and after of a brutal triple murder, of the cyclical nature of violence and of the tragic ineffectiveness of our social support systems."
Time Out New York...
"Lucid, psychologically probing and disturbing...[While they Slept is] a morally nuanced story, and a culmination of Harrison's favored themes: sex, family and power."
Booklist...
"You can count on Harrison for white-water prose and ferocious candor...Harrison's intense and resonant inquiry affirms the cathartic power of the story, and reflects on the miraculous cycle of loss and death."
About the Author
Kathryn Harrison is the author of the memoirs The Kiss and The Mother Knot. She has also written the novels Envy, The Seal Wife, The Binding Chair, Poison, Exposure, and Thicker Than Water; a travel memoir, The Road to Santiago; a biography, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux; and a collection of essays, Seeking Rapture. She lives in New York with her husband, the novelist Colin Harrison, and their children.
