While They Slept

April 21, 2008
In the early morning of April 27, 1984, outside Medford, Ore., 18-year-old Billy Gilley bludgeoned his parents, Bill and Linda, and his 11-year-old sister, Becky, to death. He believed his act would allow him and his 16-year-old sister, Jody, to free themselves from an abusive home. Comprising extensive interviews with both Jody, a Georgetown graduate and victims’ rights advocate, and Billy, serving three consecutive life sentences in Oregon, Harrison recounts the trial, where Jody was the prosecution’s star witness, and attempts to understand the Gilleys’ troubled family history. Despite differing accounts from the now estranged siblings on the severity of their parents’ abuse, it’s clear that both parents routinely engaged in verbal and physical cruelty. Billy claimed his murder of Becky was unintentional, but it sealed his fate. Novelist and memoirist Harrison (The Kiss
) attends admirably to detail, and her dissection of the effects of violence on both perpetrators and victims is thorough. But by bookending the account with musings on her incestuous relationship with her own father—already addressed in both her fiction and nonfiction—Harrison dilutes the power of the Gilleys’ story.

June 1, 2008
Ideally, the family environment is a loving, nurturing one where children are cherished and cared for. This is not always the case. Some children are raised in an emotionally and/or physically abusive environment, and the harm bestowed can haunt them throughout their lives. In rare cases, a child may take revenge against the abusive parents. Such was the case with Billy Gilley Jr. In "While They Slept", novelist/memoirist Harrison ("The Kiss") describes the details that led to Billy killing his parents as they slept and then his youngest sister, Becky, who walked in on the act. Gilley believed that he would be liberating his other sister, Jody, from their abusive parents. Harrison's accounts of these 1984 slayings come from interviews with Billy (who is still imprisoned) and surviving sister Jody and from a variety of documents (e.g., transcripts of 911 calls). Just as unusual as Harrison's pursuing this subject 24 years after the murders is her intertwining an account of own abusive childhood throughout the narrative. Whatever the title may say, it is evident that Harrison is using the Gilley tragedy as a means of dealing with her own abusive relationship with her father. Though the narrative can therefore sound self-indulgent, she does a good job of reviewing the Gilley case, offering a fundamental look at the searing private dramas that can lead to family tragedy. Recommended for criminal justice collections.Tim Delaney, SUNY at Oswego

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2008
Adult/High School-Nearly 25 years ago, 18-year-old Billy Gilley killed his parents and 11-year-old sister by hitting them repeatedly with an aluminum baseball bat. His then-16-year-old sister was not attacked, although she was in the house the night of the event. Harrison explores both what led to Gilley's actions and how those actions have colored his surviving sister's life. Jody Gilley, who is now a successful and well-educated woman, cooperated with Harrison to delve into the drama. Imprisoned in eastern Oregon, Billy Gilley also worked with the author as she accumulated information, questions, and theories about the crime. As stark as is the violence described here, so too is the emotional development of the causes and the results of that violence on both surviving children. Readers who are interested in human psychology will be fascinated by this study, which is accessible and nuanced by switches between reporting both past and present. And teens who may find cathartic release in reading about a true parricide will also see the shades of gray the events have left on Billy and Jody Gilley's current self-images."Francisca Goldsmith, Halifax Public Libraries, Nova Scotia"

Copyright 2008 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2008
You can count on Harrison for white-water prose and ferocious candor. In her daring variation on In Cold Blood, Harrison takes us to an isolated house in Oregon where, in 1984, 18-year-old Billy Gilley beat his parents and 11-year-old sister, Becky, to death with a baseball bat. He then informed his terrified 16-year-old sister, Jody, that they were finally free from their parents abuse: the Gilley household had been a veritable theater of horrors. Harrison, who survived her own shocking point of rupture, an incestuous affair with her father (recounted in The Kiss, 1997), revisits the heart-wrenching Gilley case in a quest to understand its before and after. While incisively analyzing her tricky conversations with Billywho writes childrens fantasies (he didnt mean to kill Becky) while serving three consecutive life sentencesand withJody, a successful communications strategist, Harrison painstakingly chronicles their legacy of violence, how society failed Billy at every turn, and how as a girl-in-peril Jody found strength and guidance in books. Reaching more deeply, she looks to Greek myths for keys to the grim mysteries of incest and patricide. Harrisons intense and resonant inquiry affirms the cathartic power of story, andreflects onthe miraculous cycle of loss and rebirth.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)