Cummins, Jeanine 1975(?)-

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CUMMINS, Jeanine 1975(?)-

PERSONAL: Born c. 1975, in Washington, DC. Education: Towson State University, B.A.

ADDRESSES: Home—New York, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Penguin Group USA, 375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014.

CAREER: New American Library, New York, NY, sales manager.

WRITINGS:

A Rip in Heaven: A Memoir of Murder and Its Aftermath, New American Library (New York, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: On a family visit to St. Louis, Missouri in 1991, Jeanine Cummins's brother Tom snuck out with his two female cousins to visit an abandoned bridge on the Mississippi River. The two cousins, Julie and Robin Kerry, were raped and killed. Tom was beaten and narrowly survived being thrown into the river. Cummins's A Rip in Heaven: A Memoir of Murder and Its Aftermath describes in detail how her brother's life unraveled after the horrific event and how her family and her cousins' family sought for many years to deal with the devastation. Originally intended as a coauthored project with her brother, Cummins's work took on a third-person narrative as she researched court records and attended trials associated with the case. The author recalled in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "There are things I found out about the crimes that I could have happily went to my grave without ever knowing."

A Rip in Heaven deals as much with the lasting survivors' trauma over the event as it does with the actual murder itself. Cummins describes how her brother was initially charged with the crime, and then she covers the criminal convictions of the four men who actually committed the rape-murders. She discusses the guilt she feels, and her brother feels, about surviving the incident, and the frustration over the media's sympathetic sentiment for the perpetrators. A Kirkus Reviews critic called A Rip in Heaven "a wrenching tale," adding that Cummins "succeeds overall in acquainting the reader with the horrific toll exacted by proximity to violence." Claire Lui in Entertainment Weekly deemed the book "a howl of rage against the assailants." On NewCityChicago.com Mike Newirth concluded that Cummins's tale "throbs with anger and the urge to spiritually rescue her cousins."