A Case for Solomon: Bobby Dunbar and the Kidnapping That Haunted a Nation
“A thoughtful look at the elusiveness of truth and the fluidity of identity… It’s difficult not to empathize with both sides of this case, as everyone loses something—particularly the child caught in the middle.” --Publisher's Weekly"A Case For Solomonis a fascinating tale of an American changeling -- a little boy lost to the Louisiana swamps, only to be conjured back by headlines and a mother's agony. Within the life of Bobby Dunbar, a man who was a mystery even to himself, Tal McThenia and Margaret Cutright have uncovered a dramatic case of families caught between grief, injustice, and the desperate will to believe." --Paul Collins, author ofThe Murder of the Century"A Case for Solomonis haunting and unforgettable. It swept me up like no other book I've read in a long time. It is a mystery story finally solved after a hundred years, but it's also a profound and heartbreaking examination of identity and loss told by writers whose hard-won research and narrative gifts are plain on every page. The exotic settings, the characters whose love redeems as well as destroys, a plot that is downright biblical...and in the end a little boy with arms outstretched and this question on his lips: Who am I?" --John Ed Bradley, author ofTupelo NightsandIt Never Rains in Tiger Stadium“A Case for Solomoncan easily be read as a kidnapping mystery or a legal thriller or a saga of class privilege or a lively indictment of the deadly shenanigans when the media circus comes to town. To me, it’s a tragic accounting of the abuses inherent in our confidence about what's in the best interests of a child. And all of it is evidence of the power of nonfiction--fact after astonishing fact.” --Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, author ofRandom Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx"a solid read that provides plenty of food for thought." --Library Journal“A Case For Solomonis a thoroughly researched and detailed work of history that lets its mystery unfold with the restraint and craft of a detective story. Though as suspenseful and dark as any good thriller... it wonders, through the telling of the shocking tale, at greater questions - about the nature of identity, and family, and to what lengths people might go to avoid knowing a terrible truth." --The Times-Picayune"A Case for Solomon...which reads like fiction, revisits the sensational 1912 kidnapping of four-year-old Bobby Dunbar from the swamps of Louisiana. The discovery of a boy matching Bobby’s description in rural Mississippi and the shocking emergence of an indigent woman from North Carolina claiming to be his mother were red meat to newsmen ravenous for scandal. The nation was rapt for months, although the mystery wouldn’t be solved for a century." --Vanity Fair"The saga related in the book is so mind-bending that some readers might need to digest certain passages about family connections more than once, as I felt compelled to do. It is worth the effort." --The Atlanta Journal-Constitution"A fascinating narrative about an ostensible kidnapping and a 90-year case of mistaken identity, fully steeped in the flavor of the era. [A Case for Solomon] is a narrative about the fierceness of parental love, the flaws of the legal system, and ultimately about how we derive our own sense of who we are." --The Boston Globe