Crime Time: VIRTUAL Book Club: The Third Rainbow Girl

Can’t get enough of the true crime genre? Looking for something to do after binging shows like Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, McMillions, and The Vow? Then join the Livingston Public Library for the brand new virtual book club, Crime Time. Crime Time is a true crime and crime adjacent book club where readers will explore everything from historical crime to unsolved mysteries.

For our May meeting we will be reading:  The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia by  Emma Copley Eisenberg

Copies will be available at the main desk.  You can also check out the eBook title here.

Registration is required.  A  Zoom link will be sent out the day before the program.

Summary:

*** A NEW YORK TIMES "100 Notable Books of 2020" ***

A stunning, complex narrative about the fractured legacy of a decades-old double murder in rural West Virginia—and the writer determined to put the pieces back together.

In the early evening of June 25, 1980, in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, two middle-class outsiders named Vicki Durian, 26, and Nancy Santomero, 19, were murdered in an isolated clearing. They were hitchhiking to a festival known as the Rainbow Gathering but never arrived. For thirteen years, no one was prosecuted for the “Rainbow Murders” though deep suspicion was cast on a succession of local residents in the community, depicted as poor, dangerous, and backward. In 1993, a local farmer was convicted, only to be released when a known serial killer and diagnosed schizophrenic named Joseph Paul Franklin claimed responsibility. As time passed, the truth seemed to slip away, and the investigation itself inflicted its own traumas—-turning neighbor against neighbor and confirming the fears of violence outsiders have done to this region for centuries.
 
In The Third Rainbow Girl, Emma Copley Eisenberg uses the Rainbow Murders case as a starting point for a thought-provoking tale of an Appalachian community bound by the false stories that have been told about it.