Coming in July 2024 from Zando Projects
What emerges is both a poignant portrait of a life cut short and a forceful examination of the cultural forces that shaped Bush’s murder, including gendered violence and inadequate attention to mental health issues on college campuses. It’s a devastating deep dive into a confounding crime.
—Publishers Weekly
Sarah Gerard’s Carrie Carolyn Coco is simultaneously an investigation of a murder, a tribute to the victim’s life, and an expose of the legal and educational systems designed to protect wealthy, white men from their own actions. As a journalist, P.I., and writer, Gerard relies on her investigative powers to make sense of the senseless. Deeply felt, impeccably researched, and told with pinpoint precision, Gerard casts a penetrating and enlightened eye on the cracked foundations of justice.
— Erika Krouse, author of Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation
What stuns about Carrie Carolyn Coco is not merely the tragic murder of a woman by her male roommate, but also the intricate ways in which Sarah Gerard unravels poison in the dark corners of Carolyn Bush’s world: a fancy liberal arts college with a chilling history of violence; the violence in Bush’s everyday existence; the web of people who are willing to stand up for Bush’s murderer, some with dubious motives. Gerard also illuminates Bush’s life by making her wildly and shimmeringly alive—she is not merely The Dead Girl of the narrative, but also a complex protagonist whose desires and idiosyncrasies are laid plain in this astonishing exploration.
— Esmé Weijun Wang, New York Times bestselling author of The Collected Schizophrenias
In this lyrical masterwork of grief and reckoning, Sarah Gerard turns the tables on true crime, bringing her murdered friend Carolyn Bush fully to life on the page not as a victim but as a dazzling young poet finding her way in New York City. At once an elegy and an investigation, Carrie Carolyn Coco celebrates a talented woman’s too-brief spark while fearlessly confronting the shocking forces of wealth and power that protected her confessed murderer at trial. A devastatingly effective interrogation of privilege and justice, riveting right through to its stunning final pages. If this book doesn’t break your heart, you don’t have one.
— Ellen McGarrahan, author of Two Truths and a Lie: A Murder, A Private Investigator, and Her Search for Justice
A meticulous, maddening, and tenderly crafted exploration of the bureaucracy of loss, the mirror-maze of tragic mourning, and the search for meaning after death, Carrie Carolyn Coco provides the rarest form of literary testament in its unswayable pursuit of truth, justice, honor, and love. What an incredible gift Sarah Gerard has summoned from her soul to shed a lasting glow on a singular thinker, artist, and friend, Carolyn Bush, lost far too young, still full of a life most might have never known.
— Blake Butler, author of Molly
Heart wrenching, harrowing and relentlessly researched, Sarah Gerard’s Carrie Carolyn Coco kept me up at night searching for answers, not only to the looming why at the heart of the story, but to the wider systems of silence and oppression that so often lead to tragedy. An unforgettable account of a true, terrible crime, and a lasting remembrance of a life lost too soon written by one of the most compassionate, searingly talented writers working today.
— Allie Rowbottom, author of Jell-O Girls: A Family History
Sarah Gerard has written a penetrating, engaging and illuminating exploration of the murder of her friend Carolyn Bush, a young, free-spirited, aspiring poet. Gerard dives deep into a world where privilege and class collide and where truth and justice seem elusive. She raises important questions about mental illness and criminal responsibility and honors her friend with compassion and sensitivity. Gerard combines her talents as a novelist and sharp skills as a journalist to create an impressive work of narrative nonfiction inhabited by complex characters and rich storytelling.
— Kevin Davis, author of The Brain Defense: Murder in Manhattan and the Dawn of Neuroscience in America’s Courtrooms
At last, a book about what is left out of most murder stories: the way a death reverberates through a community, forever changing all those who knew and loved the deceased. Sarah Gerard has an exacting eye. She brings her formidable strengths as both a writer and private investigator to bear in Carrie Carolyn Coco, as she investigates the shocking murder of her friend. Deeply affecting and impossible to put down.
— Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir
In a sweeping act of grace, Sarah Gerard has written an ode, a testament, a love letter to a friend, and the scathing critique of true crime I’ve been waiting for. Carrie Carolyn Coco presents an unfathomable act of violence and a depiction of the systemic, patriarchal ills that allow exploitative mythologies to be spun from suffering. This book is a balm and antidote to such narratives—offering, instead, a story full of light, artistry, and strength. I didn’t know Carolyn Bush or her art when I started this book; now I do, and my life is fuller for it. I hope more and more storytelling will dignify, as Gerard has so powerfully done, lives and talents like Carolyn’s, lost too soon.
— T Kira Māhealani Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls
Who gets to be considered an artist? What are our duties to protect and care for each other? What happens to the stories someone told when they die? What are the ingredients of white male entitlement and systemic violence? These are just a few of the terrible, joyful, philosophical, intractable, ineffable, and wise questions Sarah Gerard ponders in Carrie Carolyn Coco. Stylish, sly, strange (in the best way), and sublime.
— Emma Copley Eisenberg, author of The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia