"I have a story to tell. It is a story of murder told from inside the house where murder is born. It is the house where I grew up, a house that, in some ways, I have never been able to leave."

Mikal Gilmore is a Rolling Stone writer and the youngest brother of murderer Gary Gilmore, who became, in 1977, the first person to be executed in the United States after a 10-year hiatus, a case which was subsequently recounted in Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song. This brave and eloquent book is the story that only Mikal Gilmore knows: the violence in multiple generations of his family, what the Gilmore house was like as he was growing up, his relationship with his brother, and his experience of the dramatic events surrounding Gary Gilmore's determination to be executed as planned, without appeal. Shot in the Heart pulls off the rare feat of conveying intense emotion without sentimentality or self-pity. The author's struggle is to set himself apart from the lurid true-crime fraternity of his father and brothers yet remain able to understand why he feels both guilty and lonely over his exclusion from his family's violent history. --Fiona Webster


From Publishers Weekly
This L.A. Times award winner by the brother of murderer Gary Gilmore tells a multigenerational tale of familial abuse. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
The last months of lifetime criminal Gary Gilmore, who murdered two Mormon store clerks and then demanded that the state of Utah execute him, were painstakingly chronicled in Norman Mailer's classic The Executioner's Song (LJ 11/1/79). Shot in the Heart, by Gilmore's youngest brother, is even more harrowing. Not a "tell-all" work about growing up with a killer, it offers a broader account of a family gone haywire-a family of hauntings, beatings, hate, and, almost shockingly, love. Gilmore's book reminds us that the sins of the fathers, mothers, and brothers-our sins-can be passed on with the same devastating effect of a rogue gene that carries a dread disease. This book is not pretty, but it is highly recommended.--Jim Burns, Ottumwa, Ia.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


New York Times Book Review, Kathryn Harrison
Mikal Gilmore's triumph is that he pushes his readers beyond being helplessly enthralled witnesses to the point where, with him, we might consider not only that violence and evil do exist within the limits of predictable human behavior, but that there is evidence of another equally mysterious force, which some of us would call grace: the same grace that impelled Mikal Gilmore to take up a pen instead of a gun and to write a very difficult memoir with generosity and compassion. This may not be redemption, but it is better than mere survival.


New York Times, Michiko Kakutani
It is a dark, troubling book, Shot in the Heart, a book that reads like a combination of The Brothers Karamazov and a series of Johnny Cash ballads, a book whose anomalous combination of the ordinary and the horrific is chilling, heartbreaking and alarming all at once.


From Booklist
A startling book by a senior editor at Rolling Stone magazine, who, more relevantly, is the youngest brother of Gary Gilmore, the convicted murderer (and subject of Norman Mailer's Executioner's Song who was executed by firing squad in Utah in 1977 amid tremendous publicity. Younger brother Gilmore has come out of the closet, so to speak, after all these years neither to excuse his older sibling nor to cash in on his notoriety. He does so as catharsis, to finally reestablish a connection to a family, however dysfunctional it was and however distanced from it he felt at one time, who spawned a killer. His book is overlong but effective nonetheless, as Mikal seeks to identify and understand the family environment that engendered Gary's violent nature. Both parents came to their marriage with considerable psychological baggage, but it was Gary's father's violent behavior that seems to have been the primary ingredient contributing to the kind of man Gary became. This is not a book of pat answers, but rather, a sad, sensitive, well-written account from the heart. Brad Hooper


From Kirkus Reviews
In a narrative that holds all the morbid fascination of a bad car wreck, the kid brother of Gary Gilmore--immortalized in Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, he campaigned for his own death and became the first person to be executed in America after the death penalty was reinstated in the 1970s--details a sickening family history of violence, rage, and lies that spans several generations. Mother Bessie, who was traumatized by her unforgiving Mormon parents (her father who was beaten with his own father's wooden leg, in turn would batter Bessie's brother until the gawky boy passed out), married Frank Gilmore, a Catholic 20-some years her senior. Frank neglected to mention that he had six ex-wives and several abandoned children. The son of a mother who withheld her love, Frank became a drunk and a thief who left home for months at a time and moved his family frequently to evade the law. To get back at him, Bessie had an affair and became pregnant by one of his sons from a previous marriage. He suspected Gary was not his (in fact, the oldest, Frank, Jr., wasn't) and particularly disdained him. Frank regularly and savagely beat Bessie, and Mikal's older brothers Gary, Frank, Jr., and Gaylen, and robbed them of all shreds of security and self-esteem. Gary, a gifted artist and very intelligent teenager, was sent to reform school because of his father's recalcitrance, and there he became a criminal. His stints in jail further turned him into the monster who senselessly murdered two young Mormon men. Mikal humanizes Gary, and tells of the wrenching legacy he and his other brothers inherited: alcoholic Gaylen died of knife wounds, probably inflicted by a jealous husband; Frank, Jr., cared for the mother who hated him until her death, and then became a recluse; and the youngest, Mikal, now a senior editor at Rolling Stone, lives with the guilt of being his father's favorite and the shame of being Gary's brother. Articulate, brave, and heartbreaking. (15 b&w photos, not seen) (First serial to Rolling Stone; film rights to Alan Pakula; Book-of-the-Month Club featured selection; Quality Paperback Book Club selection; author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"One of the most beautifully written, moving nonfiction books published in the past five years." -- Deidre Donahue, USA Today.

"Remarkable, astonishing... Shot in the Heart reads like a combination of Brothers Karamazov and a series of Johnny Cash ballads... chilling, heartbreaking, and alarming." -- Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times.

"Mesmerizing... riveting and immensely moving... Shot in the Heart is a gesture of sustained courage that just happens to be a page-turner." -- Daphne Merkin,The New Yorker.


Review
"One of the most beautifully written, moving nonfiction books published in the past five years." -- Deidre Donahue, USA Today.

"Remarkable, astonishing... Shot in the Heart reads like a combination of Brothers Karamazov and a series of Johnny Cash ballads... chilling, heartbreaking, and alarming." -- Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times.

"Mesmerizing... riveting and immensely moving... Shot in the Heart is a gesture of sustained courage that just happens to be a page-turner." -- Daphne Merkin,The New Yorker.


Book Description
Gary Gilmore, the infamous murderer immortalized by Norman Mailer in The Executioner's Song, campaigned for his own death and was executed by firing squad in 1977. Writer Mikal Gilmore is his younger brother. In Shot in the Heart, he tells the stunning story of their wildly dysfunctional family: their mother, a blacksheep daughter of unforgiving Mormon farmers; their father, a drunk, thief, and con man. It was a family destroyed by a multigenerational history of child abuse, alcoholism, crime, adultery, and murder. Mikal, burdened with the guilt of being his father's favorite and the shame of being Gary's brother, gracefully and painfully relates a murder tale "from inside the house where murder is born... a house that, in some ways, [he has] never been able to leave." Shot in the Heart is the history of an American family inextricably tied up with violence, and the story of how the children of this family committed murder and murdered themselves in payment for a long lineage of ruin. Haunting, harrowing, and profoundly affecting, Shot in the Heart exposes and explores a dark vein of American life that most of us would rather ignore. It is a book that will leave no reader unchanged.


From the Publisher
Gary Gilmore, the infamous murderer immortalized by Norman Mailer in The Executioner's Song, campaigned for his own death and was executed by firing squad in 1977. Writer Mikal Gilmore is his younger brother. In Shot In The Heart, he tells the stunning story of their wildly dysfunctional family: their mother, a blacksheep daughter of unforgiving Mormon farmers; their father, a drunk, thief, and con man. It was a family destroyed by a multigenerational history of child abuse, alcoholism, crime, adultery, and murder. Mikal, burdened with the guilt of being his father's favorite and the shame of being Gary's brother, gracefully and painfully relates a murder tale "from inside the house where murder is born... a house that, in some ways, [he has] never been able to leave." Shot In The Heart is the history of an American family inextricably tied up with violence, and the story of how the children of this family committed murder and murdered themselves in payment for a long lineage of ruin. Haunting, harrowing, and profoundly affecting, Shot In The Heart exposes and explores a dark vein of American life that most of us would rather ignore. It is a book that will leave no reader unchanged.

"One of the most beautifully written, moving nonfiction ooks published in the past five years." -- Deidre Donahue, USA Today.

"Remarkable, astonishing... Shot In The Heart reads like a combination of Brothers Karamazov and a series of Johnny Cash ballads... chilling, heartbreaking, and alarming." -- Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times.

"Mesmerizing... riveting and immensely moving... Shot In The Heart is a gesture of sustained courage that just happens to be a page-turner." -- Daphne Merkin,The New Yorker.


From the Inside Flap
Gary Gilmore, the infamous murderer immortalized by Norman Mailer in The Executioner's Song, campaigned for his own death and was executed by firing squad in 1977. Writer Mikal Gilmore is his younger brother. In Shot in the Heart, he tells the stunning story of their wildly dysfunctional family: their mother, a blacksheep daughter of unforgiving Mormon farmers; their father, a drunk, thief, and con man. It was a family destroyed by a multigenerational history of child abuse, alcoholism, crime, adultery, and murder. Mikal, burdened with the guilt of being his father's favorite and the shame of being Gary's brother, gracefully and painfully relates a murder tale "from inside the house where murder is born... a house that, in some ways, [he has] never been able to leave." Shot in the Heart is the history of an American family inextricably tied up with violence, and the story of how the children of this family committed murder and murdered themselves in payment for a long lineage of ruin. Haunting, harrowing, and profoundly affecting, Shot in the Heart exposes and explores a dark vein of American life that most of us would rather ignore. It is a book that will leave no reader unchanged.


From the Back Cover
"One of the most beautifully written, moving nonfiction books published in the past five years." -- Deidre Donahue, USA Today.

"Remarkable, astonishing... Shot in the Heart reads like a combination of Brothers Karamazov and a series of Johnny Cash ballads... chilling, heartbreaking, and alarming." -- Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times.

"Mesmerizing... riveting and immensely moving... Shot in the Heart is a gesture of sustained courage that just happens to be a page-turner." -- Daphne Merkin,The New Yorker.

ANNOTATION

The brother of Gary Gilmore, the infamous murderer immortalized in Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, tells the stunning story of their wildly dysfunctional family--a family destroyed by a multigenerational history of child abuse, alcoholism, crime, adultery, and murder. "Impossible to put down."--John Schulian, L.A. Times. Photos.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

I have a story to tell. It is a story of murders: murders of the flesh, and of the spirit; murders born of heartbreak, of hatred, of retribution. It is the story of where those murders begin, of how they take form and enter our actions, how they transform our lives, how their legacies spill into the world and the history around us. And it is a story of how the claims of violence and murder end - if, indeed, they ever end... Let me begin to tell you a bit about the story. I am the brother of a man who murdered innocent men. His name was Gary Gilmore. After his murders, he campaigned to end his own life, and in January 1977, he was shot to death by a firing squad in Draper, Utah. Many people, of course, already know this part of the story. It was major international news for several months in 1976 and 1977, and it was later the subject of a popular novel and television film, Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song. What is less generally known, and what has never been much documented, are the origins of Gary's violence - the true history of my family. These parts of the story remained unknown, until now, because no one would talk about them. Gary flatly refused to discuss the secrets of his childhood, and when his mother, Bessie, was asked about the family's past, she answered in maddening and evasive riddles. For many years Mikal, too, avoided his past, distancing himself from it, hoping that whatever had turned his family's hopes to wreckage would not destroy his own life. He was different from them, he thought. He could pursue his own family dream. Then, one day, that dream dissolved into nightmare. Mikal realized he had not escaped his family's ruin after all, and that the only way to do so, to bring an end to the horrible legacy, would be to go back into the family history and, finally, crack open its god-awful secrets. And so he did. Shot in the Heart is the history of an American family inextricably tied up with violence, and the story of how the children o

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

This L.A. Times award winner by the brother of murderer Gary Gilmore tells a multigenerational tale of familial abuse. (Sept.)

Library Journal