Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave

This book is a marvelous new incarnation of old-fashioned investigative journalism at its best. It was obviously written with considerable and enduring courage, the author going into a community of complicity and denial and no little violence to lay bare the reality no one wants to confront. In doing that, the author captures the sheer grit of the place, the people, the time with such force that a reader thinks he's there in the smokey desert bars, there in the Marine barracks and command quarters sour with self-delusion and bureaucratic fear, there in the dark corners of a town that watched the killing of a young woman with what can only be called moral dysfunction. And the author does it all with a grace and cut worthy of one of those Marine officer's sword cutting through a silk scarf. This is a book, as the reviewers say (the good ones anyway) that exists at so many different levels, and that gives trhe readers so mnay gifts. We see the small towns of the Great American Desert as we've never seen them before. We go inside the Marine Corps with rare understanding and compassion and accuracy, with devastating insight. We come away, as in all fine writing, with a heightened sense of what any and all of us have in common with the struggling human beings caught in this tragedy on all sides. Upton Sinclair the great American writer of a century ago once said that a free people can't be honest with themselves and others, let alone free, without honest and readable journalism. Thank God for the Stillmans who continue to give us that chance. I can't recommend this book too highly for readers of all ages, but for young adults especially, in the hope that our future in this great country might still be less haunted than our past in places like Twentynine Palms. An Admiring Fellow Author

The writing in this book is simply gorgeous. I generally don't read nonfiction, but a friend had this book with her, and I thumbed through it, and couldn't resist buying it. The story is compelling, and truly heartbreaking...but this is the kind of writing you don't see very often. The author is a word-painter. ... This is a beautifully-told story, and I'm glad I bought it. Passed it on to a friend who felt the same way. Five thumbs up.

I thought 29 Palms was brilliant. The book uses a brutual double homocide near a military base as a paradigm through which to view the cyclical nature of violence against lower income females. The book definitely gave me insight into the type of aggression that all females can face, and how some seem almost predestined for violence no matter where they go. From a sociological point of view, I thought the book brilliantly stiched together the military base, the desert, and females' historical background to create this situation that continued to bubble up to the explosive and horrific conclusion. My hope is that this book will serve as a catalyst for males to rethink their treatment of females and for females to be empower to break the cycles that constantly strive to drag them down.

... I am neither an acquaintance nor family member of the murder victims whose plight is recounted in Ms. Stillman's book. Nor am I a past or present resident of Twenty-nine Palms. I found this story to be engrossing with the a depth that goes well beyond a specific incident in a specific desert town. It is loaded with symbols and meaning that speak to a much broader America. That people whose lives are entwined with this story take issue with the author in their reviews is no surprise as Ms. Stillman writes with chilling candidness. As a third party reader, I found it to be a quick and exciting read and I found Ms. Stillman's writing to be very evocative especially in the way she describes the desert.

I came across this book just by chance and I am so glad I did. It is a truly gripping true crime saga so well told by this author, Deanne Stillman. What an amazing talent. I hesitate to use the term but this book really is a"page-turner". I started in the morning and just kept reading throughout the day. One of the best books I have read this year. What is also amazing is the way she created such a sense of place. I have passed through Twentynine Palms only a few times, but I feel I know it better than I do my own city. This is a must-read!