Shot in the Heart

By: Mikal Gilmore

Narrated by: Will Patton

Length: 3 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A murder tale "from inside the house where murder is born." Haunting, harrowing, and profoundly affecting, Shot in the Heart exposes and explores a dark vein of American life that most of us would rather ignore. It is a book that will leave no listener unchanged.

Gary Gilmore, the infamous murderer immortalized by Norman Mailer in The Executioner's Song, campaigned for his own death and was executed by firing squad in 1977. Writer Mikal Gilmore is his younger brother. In Shot in the Heart, he tells the stunning story of their wildly dysfunctional family: their mother, a black sheep daughter of unforgiving Mormon farmers; their father, a drunk, thief, and con man. It was a family destroyed by a multigenerational history of child abuse, alcoholism, crime, adultery, and murder.

Mikal, burdened with the guilt of being his father's favorite and the shame of being Gary's brother, gracefully and painfully relates his story "from inside the house where murder is born... a house that, in some ways, [he has] never been able to leave." Shot in the Heart is the history of an American family inextricably tied up with violence, and the story of how the children of this family committed murder and murdered themselves in payment for a long lineage of ruin.

©1994 Mikal Gilmore (P)1994 Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio Publishing, All Rights Reserved

Critic reviews

1994, National Book Critics Circle Awards, Winner

"One of the most beautifully written, moving nonfiction books published in the past five years." -- Deidre Donahue, USA Today.

"Remarkable, astonishing... Shot in the Heart reads like a combination of Brothers Karamazov and a series of Johnny Cash ballads... chilling, heartbreaking, and alarming." -- Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times.

"Mesmerizing... riveting and immensely moving... Shot in the Heart is a gesture of sustained courage that just happens to be a page-turner." -- Daphne Merkin, The New Yorker.

This audio book would be perfect if it wasn't abridged!!!

I read this book years ago, it was so good I read it more then once, so I was so excited when I found the audiobook available on audible, and I was even more excited when I realized that Will Patton was the narrator, he is one of my favorite narrators and does an excellent job reading this book too. But the party was over when I realized that this audible edition is abridged!!!! There is so much material missing. I was so dissapointed! I don't understand why anyone ever thinks it's a good idea to remove part of a book. I don't care if I have to pay more, or if the book costs less for an abridged version. I want the book in it's entirety. I hope audible will offer this title unabridged, soon. This is a very interesting book written by Garey Gilmore's brother, Mikal Gilmore, about growing up in their violent, disfuntional family. Read The Executioners Song, which audible has, unabridged, about Gary Gilmore, who killed two men and then fought for his right to die, written by Norman Mailer. Both books are excellent, but like I said, this version of Shot In The Heart is abridged....sigh.....very, very bad audible.com. Don't cheat us, we want our audio books uncut!! At least I do.......