The Fact of a Body

March 15, 2017
An accomplished literary debut weaves memoir and true-crime investigation.Essayist and lawyer Marzano-Lesnevich (Writing/Harvard Kennedy School of Government) fashions an absorbing narrative about secrets, pain, revenge, and, ultimately, the slippery notion of truth. In 2003, working as a summer intern at a Louisiana law firm that defends clients sentenced to death, the author discovered the case of a child's murder by a confessed pedophile. Passionately opposed to capital punishment, she realized that she wanted this client to die. That response--unsettling and unexpected--incited an interest in the case that became nothing less than an obsession. For 10 years, she read 30,000 pages of documents, including court transcripts, newspaper coverage, and a play based on interviews with the victim's mother; watched the killer's taped confessions from three trials; and traveled multiple times to Louisiana. That fixation inflames another investigation, as well, into her own troubling past. -I am pulled to this story by absences,- she writes. -Strange blacknesses, strange forgettings, that overtake me at times. They reveal what is still unresolved inside me.- With care and pacing that is sometimes too deliberate, the author reveals the blacknesses in her own family: her father, a successful lawyer, succumbed to rage and depressions; her mother, also a lawyer, was stubbornly silent about her past; the author learns that she was not a twin but really a triplet, with a sister who died within months, never mentioned by the family; and, most horrifically, her grandfather sexually abused her and her younger sister for years. When Marzano-Lesnevich finally revealed the abuse to her parents, they buried it, refusing to acknowledge her pain even when she became severely depressed and anorexic. Her family members, she realizes now, were -prisoners- of their own triumphant narrative: children of immigrants, they were living the American dream, -determinedly fine.- The author admits that she has -layered my imagination- onto her sources to make her characters vivid, inevitably raising questions about the line between nonfiction and fiction and about how such embellishment can manipulate the reader's perceptions and sympathies. A powerful evocation of the raw pain of emotional scars.

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Starred review from April 1, 2017

During an internship in law school, Marzano-Lesnevich (public policy, Harvard Kennedy Sch.) viewed the videotaped confession of a man convicted of murdering a six-year-old boy and possibly molesting him. In an instant, though a lifelong opponent of the death penalty, she wished death upon Ricky Langley. Struggling to pinpoint this new, aggressive feeling, the author began to dig deeper into not only Langley's story but also her own, parallel in disturbing and heart-wrenching ways. Half memoir, half crime investigation, this book alternates among the present, past, and everywhere in between within each of their lives. Marzano-Lesnevich was the victim of sexual abuse by her grandfather, which her parents discovered and halted, only to remain silent on the matter. Descriptions of the murder and sexual abuse throughout are often graphic, and readers may be cautioned. The author describes the court case Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co., which contends with the issue of fault--who or what is the initial cause for blame. She poses a greater philosophical and legal question of one's past and how that determines cause in an exquisite and thought-provoking comparison study. VERDICT The writing is superb and gripping and never heavy-handed on the legal jargon, creating a moving must-have for any collection. [See Prepub Alert, 11/27/16.]--Kaitlin Malixi, Bucks Cty. Free Lib., Doylestown, PA

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Starred review from April 15, 2017
As her subtitle implies, true-crime writer and essayist Marzano-Lesnevich here combines two genres, and the result is surprising, suspenseful, and moving. Ricky Langley, living in small-town Louisiana in 1992, is a convicted pedophile trying to turn his life around. He has been mildly successfuluntil he meets six-year-old Jeremy, whom he confesses to murdering; later the boy's body is found in the room Ricky rents. In 2003, Marzano-Lesnevich begins an internship at a Louisiana law firm that's working to convert Ricky's death sentence to life in prison. She is drawn to the law not only because her parents were both lawyers but because she doesn't believe in the death penalty and wants to defend those sentenced to it. Only after seeing Ricky's taped confession does she believe he deserves to die. He is a living reminder of abuse Marzano-Lesnevich suffered as a young child, and as she delves deeper into both her and Ricky's childhoods, she discovers further connections, and each story begins to bleed into the other. The subject matter is difficult, and the author doesn't shy away from graphic descriptions, but readers are rewarded with a book that defies both its genres, turning into something wholly different and memorable.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)