Alligator Candy

February 8, 2016
In this solemn memoir, journalist Kushner returns to the horrifying murder of his brother in Tampa in 1973. Kushner, only four years old at the time, begged 11-year-old Jonathan to get him candy at the local 7-Eleven and then watched him cycle away into the woods. Jonathan never returned, and his disappearance led to an extraordinary search that apprehended the murderers, two psychopaths who had been stalking children in the area. One of the killers was executed; when the second became eligible for parole, Kushner felt compelled to research and confront the tragedy that he had avoided for so long. The strength of Kushner’s narrative lies in his exploration of how trauma distorts and reshapes even the strongest families. In the wake of Jonathan’s murder, Kushner’s father, a progressive anthropology professor, shifted his research to focus on grief and loss, while his mother helped pioneer hospice care. Yet the family members rarely shared their feelings, and Kushner couldn’t bring himself to write about the murder until after his father’s death. Kushner’s effort to grapple with his loss takes far more space than the actual investigation, and at times, the narrative is unfocused and confusing. Nevertheless, his vivid evocation of his brother, his family, and their Jewish, academic, Southern milieu is a moving tribute.

May 15, 2016

One of the takeaways from this book by Kushner (contributing editor, Rolling Stone; Ferris Professor of Journalism, Princeton Univ.; Masters of Doom) is that loss cannot be avoided--it stays with a person for however long they need it to, but it can also provide insight into one's approach to life. When the author was four years old, his older brother, Jon, was kidnapped and murdered near their house in Florida. This memoir describes Kushner's experience after that defining moment, and the ways in which, looking back, he sees how events later were linked to that dark day. His writing effectively moves the reader to feel a range of emotions along with his family as they wait during the days Jon is missing, hear the news of his death, learn about the killers, and carry on in their own lives. It is heart-wrenching but also shows how families unite and continue forward with the memories of a loved one. VERDICT This emotional account invites readers to journey down a path that at first is in the shade but eventually wanders through strands of sunlight. You will hold those close to you tight after reading. For fans of true crime, books about getting past tragedy, and memoirs.--Ryan Claringbole, Wisconsin Dept. of Pub. Instruction, Madison

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2016

On October 28, 1973, 11-year-old Jonathan Kushner hopped on his bike and took off for the 7-Eleven. Jon's four-year-old brother, David, stood on the sidewalk and watched him peddle away. It's a small detail that might have been lost in years of subsequent day, except that this was the last time that David saw Jon alive. Over the years, the questions that haunt him stem from this moment: Could David have changed Jon's mind? If David hadn't begged his brother to buy him a toy, would Jon have gone? Readers experience the sequence of events through the perspective of David as a child: Jon's bike found off the path, Jon's body in the trunk of a car, Jon's funeral. Kids at school said that the killers had pickled Jon's body and put it in a jar. David's father said that David was inside when Jon left and could not have been the last one to see him. What really happened? At 13, David started furtively hunting through the library's microfilmed newspaper articles, searching for information about Jon's death. Teens will relate both to David's need to uncover the truth and his desire to protect his parents from what he discovers. The crime is always presented from David's intensely personal perspective, and his sense of horror is excruciatingly amplified as he realizes that his parents have known the disturbing details all along. More than 40 years later, Kushner, now an acclaimed author and journalist, is ready to tell the story.

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2016
In this thoroughly reported, masterfully written memoir about a gruesome 1973 murder, veteran journalist Kushner (Levittown, 2009) retraces the aftermath of his brother's bike ride to and from a Florida 7-Eleven, sparing no horrific details. The title of the tale comes from the Snappy Gator Gum that Jon, 11, bought there for the author, then four, but never got to deliver. Instead, one of the two killers gave it to his own son. Kushner puts the brutal attack into context, explaining what it meant to his family, his community, even the country. Though he mainly focuses on his sibling's story, he also explains how the senseless attack by two sick men who wanted to hunt people (as one confessed to his wife, who turned him in to police) contributed to a national loss of innocence. At the time, parents thought nothing of letting their children pedal through woods on their own. Not today. Now a dad himself, he shares his feelings of guilt and what-ifs. The most painful one may be, Perhaps if I hadn't asked Jon for the alligator candy, he would never have gone that day, and he would still be alive. In the end, Kushner imagines his brother telling him it's not his fault. A tragic, haunting story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2016
The story of how the author and his family dealt with the senseless murder of his older brother. In 1973, 4-year-old Kushner (Journalism/Princeton Univ.; The Bones of Marianna: A Reform School, a Terrible Secret, and a Hundred-Year Fight for Justice, 2013, etc.), a contributing editor of Rolling Stone, was living with his parents and two brothers in a Tampa suburb where children roved freely and without fear. But then, Kushner's 11-year-old brother Jon disappeared while on an errand to buy candy for his youngest brother. The family didn't learn what happened until after police investigators found his brutalized body buried in a shallow grave. In thinking about the incident as an adult, Kushner realized that he barely remembered Jon and that the details others gave him about the death "didn't stick." However, it was clear to him even as a child that both his parents and his oldest brother, Andy, understood the horror of what had happened and grieved over the loss profoundly. Eventually, the family settled into an outwardly new, but inwardly damaged, normal while Kushner and Andy acclimated themselves to being two brothers instead of three. Yet the author and his family never forgot Jon, who haunted them all. More than 20 years after Jon's murder, the family discovered that one of the men convicted of killing Jon was scheduled for a parole hearing. Kushner began an in-depth investigation of Jon's murder, episodes of which he would not be able to piece together in narrative form after his father's death in 2010. Much as the author desired closure, he realized it was a fantasy; what he sought instead was to understand how the grief he and his family suffered was "present and evolving" and how it had shaped them into the people they became. Kushner's moving book is not only a memorial to a brother tragically deprived of his right to live; it is also a meditation on the courage necessary to live freely in a world riven by pain, suffering, and evil. A probing, poignant memoir about tragedy, grief, and trying to cope.

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