Mikal Gilmore

Years ago, I devoured the gigantic Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer in a weekend. Gary Gilmore's story as Mailer told it was heart-wrenching and involving. I picked up Shot in the Heart to see what Mikal Gilmore could add to the story. The answer is both a lot and not much.

Mikal was the youngest of the four Gilmore boys, with a 6-year gap between him and the next-youngest, Gaylen. Mikal's memories start well after Gary's life had started down a hard path; in fact, his first memory of Gary show more is of a stranger being introduced as his brother (Gary had been away at a boarding school for troubled children). In some ways, Mikal lived in a different world than his brothers. Their father didn't beat Mikal, while the others were subjected to cruel treatment regularly. Mikal traveled with their father, keeping him away from his brothers and their troubles for much of his youth. He lived in a different world, but it wasn't untouched by the family's legacy of violence and chaos.

He relies on his oldest brother Frank's memory for many of the things that happened while he wasn't around, and Frank has a way with words. Both brothers are able to look back with unflinching honesty at what it was like for them, and what it may have been like for their lost brothers. This book is less about Gary Gilmore's murders and execution and more about what may have driven him to them, what demons the family had, and the mystery of how those demons affected four brothers differently. I don't know that this book alone would give you much information about Gary's case and his death without having read The Executioner's Song, but it's a powerful look at Gary's origins and surroundings if you have read the other book. show less

Mikal Gilmore has an incredible story to tell. But, here's what I can't wrap my brain around - the fact that his story is about his own brother. True, they didn't know each other very well due to their age differences growing up and the fact that Gary was always either behind bars or on the run. Mikal had to rely on an older brother's memories to fill in the gaps.
Everyone knows the story of Gary Gilmore, thanks to Norman Mailer's biography The Executioner's Song (and subsequent made for show more television movie of the same name). Everyone has heard of the controversy surrounding Gary Gilmore's time on death row. What makes Mikal's account so different is his family bond. This is his history as much as it is his brother's. Gary was born Faye Robert Coffman and from the very start his life was surrounded by rage. Mikal wraps this story inside the history of the bloody beginnings of Mormon Utah. It's as if the Gilmore family was destined to fail. Gary's fame aside, Shot in the Heart is worth reading for Mikal's story. As I mentioned before, it is as much Mikal's history as it is Gary's. Spoiler alert: don't expect a happy ending. Mikal doesn't really tie up his own tale in a neat bow. I found myself asking, what now? Where is Mikal now? More importantly, is he happy? Has he escaped the profound destruction and despair that tortured and ruined the rest of his entire family? show less

Ah, true crime. So voyeuristic.

I expected this book to be far more about Gary Gilmore's murders, that being all I knew about the family. Instead it was about the incredibly family dysfunction that created a murderer, although Gilmore also admits he doesn't know if Gary was born differently from the other children or shaped by the environment. After all, there were four brothers, and only one became a murderer.

Gilmore writes very well, and you don't get utterly overwhelmed by the litany of show more terrible events in his childhood. The descriptions of their "haunted" house in Salt Lake City (Gilmore repeats several times that he doesn't believe in ghosts, but that everyone in the family felt presences and heard voices) are chilling. Whatever was going on in that house, many people were very unhappy and creating a terrible atmosphere, and it seems like all four boys were trying to run away from that house as best they could.

There isn't much plot to describe. The Gilmores grew up in shifting, hostile circumstances, and three of them did some jail time, and two of them died young, and if one of those two hadn't famously died by firing squad, it might have just been a memoir in the whose-childhood-was-worse competition, albeit written twenty years before that competition really took off. But Mikal Gilmore writes very, very well, and manages to tell his story without self-pity, and it's many steps above your standard memoir. show less

I read The Executioner's Song when it was first published and remember the book being a very gripping read, mostly because its prose was based on interviews with many people and those interviews were transformed by Mailer into a plain, non-emotional prose style that was gripping and startling.

In this book, written some years after that book (1991-93) tells Gary Gilmore's story from a very different point of view: his younger brother. Mikal Gilmore tells the family story from at least one show more generation before their parents, and examines how damaged people can affect their descendants for more than a generation. It's a gripping book, containing horrors that most of us (luckily) never encounter, and how the way Gary was treated by his family and the penal system almost inevitably led to the cold murders he committed.

Mikal Gilmore is a very very good writer, and this book is a near masterpiece of story-telling, compassionate and gripping. It's a book that won't fade from memory for some time. Very highly recommended. show less