Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of Murder and Mercy | Author, Alex Mar

"A masterful, revelatory work of literary non-fiction about a teenage girl’s shocking crime—and its extraordinary aftermath
On a spring afternoon in 1985 in Gary, Indiana, a fifteen-year-old girl kills an elderly woman in a violent home invasion. In a city with a history of racial tensions and white flight, the girl, Paula Cooper, is Black, and her victim, Ruth Pelke, is white and a beloved Bible teacher. The press swoops in.

When Paula is sentenced to death, no one decries the impending execution of a tenth grader. But the tide begins to shift when the victim’s grandson Bill forgives the girl, against the wishes of his family, and campaigns to spare her life..." from https://alex-mar.com/seventy-times-seven/

 

Alex Mar is the author of Witches of America, which was a New York Times Notable Book and a New York Times Editors’ Pick. Her work has appeared in New York Magazine, Wired, The New York Times Book Review, and The Guardian, among many other outlets, as well as The Best American Magazine Writing. She has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Feature Writing. She is also the director of the feature-length documentary American Mystic. She lives in the Hudson Valley and New York City.

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