My favorite-sized books are small enough to fit into a jacket pocket or an overstuffed purse, and easy to read while lying down. And so it delights me to announce that my 2022 book When the Moon Turns to Blood comes out today in paperback. It’s so light! It has a whole new chapter at the end! You can read it laying down!
I was thrilled to receive my box of paperbacks a couple of weeks back; it warmed my heart to see a quote from the great Jess Walter, one of my very favorite living scribes1, gracing the cover.
It was something of a full-circle moment. It must be about 12 years ago now that I asked Jess if he’d have coffee in downtown Spokane. It was my dream to write a book. And he very graciously met me and said, yeah, you can totally do it. That encouragement was the first of many kindnesses he has extended my way. This quote is the latest.
The truth is that in all the years after that coffee with Jess, I tried and failed to write a lot of books before I actually wrote one. Many of my ideas died when I was trying to write the proposal, and found myself distracted. I knew if I was bored by working on my own idea, then it was likely the wrong one. But when the story of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell came to me, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Finally, I’d found the right book for me: one that grabbed my mind with its religiosity and strangeness, and wouldn’t let go.
When the hardcover version of When the Moon Turns to Blood came out last summer, I couldn’t have been more proud of what I’d done — but I still wanted more. The trial had been delayed and delayed and still hadn’t occurred, and I knew I would not be able to stay away when it finally went down.
The new chapter in the paperback is called “Afterword: The Bottom of the Abyss,”2 and it includes the details of Lori Vallow’s trial, which occurred in the spring of 2023 in Boise, Idaho. (Chad Daybell will stand trial in April 2024.) It was a powerful and harrowing experience, and it felt important to include my reporting from it in the book if I could. Thankfully, my editor at Twelve Books, Sean Desmond, agreed.
So is that the end of the story for me? People asked me the same question after Bundyville was done, too, and my answer is kind of the same: when is a story ever really done? There will be more court proceedings, of course, and I can’t promise I’ll stay away from those, unless something else grabs my attention. But even more, I can’t un-know the things that this book helped me figure out about religious extremism. And that will likely never be done for me.
This past weekend, I was grateful The Daily Beast published an essay I wrote, called “How the Malignant Faith of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell Went Mainstream.” It is always surprising to me when I have new things to say about something I’ve already written 300-plus pages on, but here we are.
Last week, I was honored to deliver a keynote about my work in journalism at the Spokane Human Rights Champions Awards3. Much of that talk was about how my work often centers on people who feel overlooked by society, or by the media. And that was my goal with this book, too: to make sure the victims in this case were never, ever forgotten.
I feel satisfied that I’ve achieved that.
Where to start on Jess Walter’s work? Why not try “Statistical Abstract for My Home of Spokane, Washington,” which, if you like it, is also included in his short story collection We Live in Water.
To the people who have had questions about if the audio book is updated with this new chapter: no, it is not.
The footnote to this is that I did not know I was being awarded the Bill Morlin Human Rights Journalism Award on this evening, which was presented by his lovely wife Connie. It was the proudest moment of my career, and quite a shock.