Eli won a Pulitzer Prize for writing The Bravest Woman in Seattle. Click on that link, then read the story, then do whatever you have to do to recover from a piece of writing like that, from a story as harrowing as Jennifer Hopper's, and then get back here.

While the City Slept is not a 300-page version of "The Bravest Woman in Seattle," rather, it's the product of years and years of research about the three people whose lives intersected in that little red house on South Rose Street. In powerful and absorbing prose, Eli tells the story of how Jennifer Hopper and Teresa Butz found each other and became partners. He tells the story of how Isaiah Kalebu repeatedly slipped through the cracks in the criminal justice and mental healthcare systems. He shows you how our failure to patch those cracks contributed to Kalebu's crimes against Teresa and Jennifer. And he tells the story of how Jennifer Hopper found the strength to forgive Kalebu. He does the thing that every writer is supposed to do—He looks and he looks and he doesn't turn away.

If you want to start at the beginning of that road, if you want to see how one person’s voice can begin a process that reveals cracks in huge systems designed to keep us safe, then you need to read the "The Bravest Woman in Seattle."

Also, be sure to attend the conversation between Eli, Hopper, and Marcie Sillman at Town Hall tomorrow.