Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere: A Memoir
This might be the most poetic title ever attached to a true-crime book, but this is no ordinary true-crime book. The author’s neighbor, a college math professor, disappeared, and his mutilated body was found three months later. Ballantine felt compelled to write about the murder, but the book is much more than the story of a crime. It’s also a very personal story, about Ballantine’s own life (like the victim, Ballantine was depressed and had contemplated suicide), his marriage, the challenges of raising his autistic son, his affection for his small Nebraska town and its people (a town, much like the author at the beginning of the book, used up and “politely hanging on”). Ballantine has written a lot of smaller pieces, fiction and nonfiction, and a couple of novels that have garnered him an enthusiastic following; this exquisitely crafted and deeply moving book should appeal to a wider audience, if they are steered in its direction. --David Pitt