The Wilderness of Ruin: A Tale of Madness, Fire, and the Hunt for America's Youngest Serial Killer – A Literary Gilded Age Thriller of Boston, Melville, and Depravity
Language: English
Published by William Morrow, 2015
- Hardcover
- Used
Seller: Greenworld Books, arlington, TX, U.S.A.Greenworld Books
AbeBooks seller since June 20, 2025
Condition: Used - Good
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Fast Free Shipping – Good condition. It may show normal signs of use, such as light writing, highlighting, or library markings, but all pages are intact and the book is fully readable. A solid, complete copy that's ready to enjoy.
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- Title
- The Wilderness of Ruin: A Tale of Madness, Fire, and the Hunt for America's Youngest Serial Killer – A Literary Gilded Age Thriller of Boston, Melville, and Depravity
- Author
- Montillo, Roseanne
- Publisher
- William Morrow
- Publication year
- 2015
- Condition
- good
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0062273477
- ISBN 13
- 9780062273475
"A captivating tale of depravity in the Athens of America." --Mitchell Zuckoff, author of the New York Times bestsellers Lost in Shangri-La and Frozen in Time
In late nineteenth-century Boston, home to Herman Melville and Oliver Wendell Holmes, a serial killer preying on children is running loose in the city--a wilderness of ruin caused by the Great Fire of 1872--in this literary historical crime thriller reminiscent of The Devil in the White City.
In the early 1870s, local children begin disappearing from the working-class neighborhoods of Boston. Several return home bloody and bruised after being tortured, while others never come back.
With the city on edge, authorities believe the abductions are the handiwork of a psychopath, until they discover that their killer--fourteen-year-old Jesse Pomeroy--is barely older than his victims. The criminal investigation that follows sparks a debate among the world's most revered medical minds, and will have a decades-long impact on the judicial system and medical consciousness.
The Wilderness of Ruin is a riveting tale of gruesome murder and depravity. At its heart is a great American city divided by class--a chasm that widens in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1872. Roseanne Montillo brings Gilded Age Boston to glorious life--from the genteel cobblestone streets of Beacon Hill to the squalid, overcrowded tenements of Southie. Here, too, is the writer Herman Melville. Enthralled by the child killer's case, he enlists physician Oliver Wendell Holmes to help him understand how it might relate to his own mental instability.
With verve and historical detail, Roseanne Montillo explores this case that reverberated through all of Boston society in order to help us understand our modern hunger for the prurient and sensational.
The Wilderness of Ruin features more than a dozen black-and-white photographs.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Roseanne Montillo holds an MFA from Emerson College in Massachusetts, where she teaches as a professor of literature. She is the author of The Lady and Her Monsters.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Greenworld Books
arlington, TX, U.S.A.
AbeBooks seller since June 20, 2025
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