Crossed Over: A Murder, A Memoir [Paperback]

Beverly Lowry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 8, 2002

The novelist Beverly Lowry was mourning her son’s death in a hit-and-run accident when she came across a newspaper story about Karla Faye Tucker, the infamous Houston murderer who was then on death row. The article captured Tucker’s innocent beauty, the stunning brutality of her crimes — committed with a pickaxe — and the stories of her spiritual awakening on death row. Struck by these apparent contradictions, Lowry found herself inexplicably drawn to Tucker, who some ten years later would become the first woman to be executed in Texas since 1863.

Lowry eventually began to visit Tucker in prison, and over the course of several years she listened to the tragic story of her life before the murders and, in turn, told Karla Faye about her own life and the life and death of her son Peter. Crossed Over is a memoir of this time, a moving account of an unlikely but profound and genuine friendship created in the confines of a visiting room on death row. Now with a new foreword that recounts Tucker’s last days and Lowry’s experiences at her execution, Crossed Over is also an intimate portrait of a life gone tragically awry and then redeemed behind bars.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Shortly after a hit-and-run driver killed her son Peter in 1984, Texas novelist Lowry ( Breaking Gentle ) began visiting Karla Faye Tucker, a death-row prisoner in Mountain View, Tex., who was convicted with her boyfriend for the 1983 pickaxe murders of an acquaintance and his lover. In due course Lowry read Tucker's trial transcript and interviewed the judge, Tucker's defense attorneys and the jail chaplain. There is little further investigation or much sense of where Lowry is going with any of this material. She seems as lost about what to make of Tucker's death sentence as she is about what meaning to derive from her son's death. But what we learn about Tucker's prison habilitation is instructive: her mother, a prostitute, was 13 when Tucker, the girl's third daughter, was born; Tucker started using drugs before she was 10. Also of value is the rare glimpse the book provides of prison life for a woman on death row.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

The murder weapon is a pickaxe, and the killer is 23-year-old Karla Faye Tucker, who readily admits to the crime, even stating she felt sexual gratification during the killing. Sensational media copy. In a mixture of true crime and memoir held together by a fiction writer's rich language, novelist Lowry ( Breaking Gentle , LJ 8/88) uses prison interviews and speculation about Karla from her family's snapshots to unveil an upbringing of substance abuse and prostitution. The night of the murders, Karla, having become a hardened woman living on the edge, crossed over to a realm where rage and violence replace law and order. Through sometimes tenuous comparisons, Lowry also contrasts events of her life to those of Karla, now on death row. Lowry tells of her son Peter, killed in a hit-and-run incident. Questioning her parenting, recalling his childhood and later brushes with the law, she concerns herself with what happened in between, "before and after," in both the life of her son and Karla. Recommended for true crime collections.
- Robert Hodder, Memorial Univ . of Newfoundland Lib., St. John's
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (January 8, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375713808
• ISBN-13: 978-0375713804
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #65,904 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lowry's talent makes the "unthinkable" readable., January 18, 2002

By 

Trisha E. Lisk (Hemet, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Crossed Over: A Murder, A Memoir (Paperback)

Lowry's way with words and with the flow of the story is exquisitely rendered. She has told a story that is far, far too hard to tell and made the reader glad she did. She weaves the tragedy of her own son's death with the horror of Karla Faye Tucker's life and crime and death with such a soft touch and consummate skill it can only be a gift. I am a voracious reader and can tell you that I've never read a harder story to tell, told with so much light, so much compassion, so much beauty, so much gut-wrenching honesty. I have worked with abused people and with people who have experienced great losses, and I learned from this book. Thank you, Ms. Lowry, for giving us your bone marrow in this one.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Strangely compelling, February 5, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Crossed Over: A Murder, a Memoir (Hardcover)

I am a regular reader of the true crime genre and picked up this book the same way I have picked up the others ... go to the true crime section and take something from the shelf. At the time I chose this book, I had never heard of Karla Faye Tucker or her crime. I read the book and enjoyed it for the same reason the author became close to her subject ... Karla Faye Tucker is a compelling character, despite the horrible crime she has admitted to committing. Karla Faye is surprisingly likeable, forthcoming about her life before the crime, and talks about the crime candidly, although not in a boastful or graphic way. She does not try to blame her upbringing, anyone or anything for her crime and does not plead for understanding. She simply talks about herself, what she did and how she feels about herself now. The reader is given the opportunity to make their own decision about her. About two months after I read this book, I began to hear about Karla Faye Tucker every day as her execution date drew closer. I support the death penalty and have never felt badly about the execution of a convicted murderer, in fact, I applauded this nation's ability to carry out these punishments. When Karla Faye Tucker was executed this week, I felt terribly sad. I still can't fully explain why, but this book was certainly the reason.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars True Crime Memoir of a Pick Ax Murderer, May 13, 2009

By 

Bonnie Brody "Book Lover and Knitter" (Port St. Lucie, FL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Crossed Over: A Murder, A Memoir (Paperback)

This book, in the true crime genre, is about a female pick ax murderer on death row. It is a biographical retrospective from a psychological perspective and examines Karla's early involvement with hard drugs, her upbringing by a drug addicted and prostitute mother and other environmental influences.

The author juxtaposes a memoir or her son who was recently killed in a hit-run accident. He, too, was a 'child-gone-bad' - - skirmishes with the law, school drop-out. "There but for fortune"......she thinks.

Though interesting, this book misses the boat. Karla has become 'decent' - - a christian, caring woman. However, I ended the book still thinking, 'Who is she?', and ultimately, 'so what!'. Perhaps, being of the mindset that reality rests as much in behavior as thought, I did not find Lowry's analysis of events convincing or cohesive.