Carrie Carolyn Coco: My Friend, Her Murder, and an Obsession with the Unthinkable
Sarah GerardSarah Gerard turns her keen observational eye & penetrating prose to the 2016 murder of her friend Carolyn Bush, examining the multi-faceted reasons for her death―personal & societal, avoidable & inevitable―as "nuanced and subtly intimate" (NPR) as her lauded essay collection, Sunshine State.
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On the night of Sep 28, 2016, 25-year-old Carolyn Bush was brutally stabbed to death in her New York City apartment by her roommate Render Stetson-Shanahan, leaving friends & family of both reeling. In life, Carolyn was a gregarious, smart-mouthed aspiring poet, who had seemingly gotten along well with Render, a reserved art handler. Where had it gone so terribly wrong?
This is the question that has plagued acclaimed author Sarah Gerard & driven her obsessive pursuit to understand this horrific tragedy. In Sarah’s exploration of Carolyn’s life & death, she spent thousands of hours interviewing Carolyn & Render’s friends & family, poring over court documents & news media, reading obscure writings & internet posts, & attending Carolyn’s memorials & Render’s trial.
What emerged from Sarah’s relentless instinct to follow a story & its characters to their darkest ends is a book that is at once a striking homage to Carolyn’s life, a chilling excavation of a brutal crime, & a captivating whydunit with a shocking conclusion.
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Sarah Gerard is the author of the essay collection Sunshine State, which was long-listed for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, & the novel Binary Star, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her short stories, essays, interviews, & criticism have appeared in the New York Times, T magazine, Granta, Baffler, & Vice, & in the anthologies Tampa Noir, We Can’t Help It If We’re from Florida, & Small Blows Against Encroaching Totalitarianism. Find her at Sarah-Gerard.com.