In her book, Closing the Gate, Deb Simpson of Murfreesboro writes poignantly of her family life leading to the death of her younger brother, Jimmy, in the 1997 mass suicide of Heaven’s Gate cult members.
Although he was not among the group in Rancho Santa Fe, California who simultaneously took their lives on March 26, he committed suicide five weeks later in Atlanta to join the other souls “freed” from their bodies by death to board an alien spacecraft and go to the “next level,” or so the story goes.
Simpson is candid in the telling to the point of allowing those who wreaked havoc a voice in the story. She doesn’t excuse the action of others but instead shows the vicious cycle that led to her eventual escape from dysfunction while Jimmy remained behind until he found his own way out. Readers are sure to be haunted by the story Simpson so bravely shares.
Available from Hastings Bookstore, the Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce gift show and most online bookstores.
Follow Sandee Suitt’s book blog, at http://blogs.dnj.com/gentlereader/.