Author:Justin St. GermainPublisher: Random House
Date of Publication: August 2013
Tombstone, Arizona, September 2001. Debbie St. Germain’s death in her remote trailer, apparently at the hands of her fifth husband, is a passing curiosity. “A real-life old West murder mystery,” the local TV announcers intone before the commercial break, while barroom gossips snicker cruelly. But for her twenty-year-old son, Justin St. Germain, the tragedy marks the line that separates his world into before and after.
Justin’s journey takes him back to the ghost town of Wyatt Earp and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, to the trailers he and Debbie shared, to the string of stepfathers who were a constant, sometimes threatening presence in his life, to a harsh world on the margins full of men and women all struggling to define what family means. He decides to confront people from his past and delve into the police records in an attempt to make sense of his mother’s life and death. All the while he tries to be the type of man she would have wanted him to be.
Son of A Gun is a memoir about one man's search for closure to help himself deal with the murder of his mother. When Justin was 21, his mother was shot multiple times by her husband, Ray. Ray disappears only to be found months later having committed suicide. In trying to distance himself from this mess, Justin tries to create a new life for himself. As we all know, that never works.
The story that follows is his attempt to figure out why his mother was murdered. More importantly, how she ended up with someone who would kill her. He retraces his life by talking to the several men that his mother married or lived with. I thought one of the saddest parts was when he returns to Tombstone with is girlfriend. As he shows her the historical sites, he only "sees" the sites that impacted his own history.
The book is well written and well laid out. Sprinkled throughout the book, the author includes the history of Wyatt Earp, his fight at the OK Corral and his life after. The last few pages of the book were just heart-wrenching. My only hope is that Justin has found some peace through his journey.
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About the author:
Justin St. Germain was born in Philadelphia in 1981. He attended the University of Arizona and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. He lives in Albuquerque and teaches at the University of New Mexico.
To learn more about Justin, visit his website,JustinStGermain.com.
1 comment:
I hope that Justin did find some peace in the end...
Thanks for being on the tour.
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