Sutherland Springs
God, Guns, and Hope in a Texas Town
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
**Winner of the 2021 Texas Institute of Letters Carr P. Collins’ Award for Best Book of Nonfiction**
One part Columbine, one part God Save Texas, Joe Holley's riveting, compassionate book examines the 2017 mass shooting at a church in a small Texas town, revealing the struggles and triumphs of these fellow Texans long after the satellite news trucks have gone.
Sutherland Springs was the last place anyone would have expected to be victimized by our modern-day scourge of mass shootings. Founded in the 1850s along historic Cibolo Creek, the tiny community, named for the designated physician during the siege of the Alamo, was once a vibrant destination for wealthy tourists looking to soak up the "cures" of its namesake mineral springs. By November 5, 2017, however, the day a former Air Force enlistee opened fire in the town's First Baptist Church, Sutherland Springs was a shadow of its former self. Twenty-six people died that Sunday morning, in the worst mass shooting in a place of worship in American history.
Holley, who roams the Lone Star State as the "Native Texan" columnist for the Houston Chronicle and earned a Pulitzer- Prize nomination for his editorials about guns, spent more than a year embedded in the community. Long after most journalists had left, he stayed with his fellow Texans, getting to know a close-knit group of people - victims, heroes, and survivors. Holley shows how they work to come to terms with their loss and to rebuild shattered lives, marked by their deep faith in God and in guns. He also uses Sutherland Springs' unique history and its decades-long decline as a prism for understanding how an act of unspeakable violence reflects the complicated realities of Texas and America in the twenty-first century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Holley (Hurricane Season) delivers an extraordinarily intimate account of the 2017 mass shooting that killed 26 parishioners (including an unborn child) at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Tex. He profiles survivors including Sunday School teacher David Colbath, who was shot eight times and still has a bullet lodged near his heart, and details gunman Devin Patrick Kelley's visit to the church's annual Fall Fest days before the shooting. Holley's harrowing description of the massacre includes the recollection of a nurse who tied tourniquets for the wounded and later told her husband that she had "felt a presence in the church" and "watched souls go home." Congregants say the shooting hasn't shaken their faith in God, and most remain firearms enthusiasts, though Holley notes some dissent within the church over stricter gun control measures as well as ongoing lawsuits against the U.S. Air Force (which failed to properly register Kelley's court-martial conviction with the FBI) and the sporting goods store where he bought the assault rifle used in the shooting. Holley's decision to conclude with a strong antigun argument strikes an off-note in a book that is otherwise deeply respectful of its subjects' viewpoints. Nevertheless, this empathetic, finely wrought chronicle offers a revealing window into an ongoing national tragedy.