Customer Reviews

In Eddie's Name: One Family's Triumph over Tragedy

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Anyone who is a teen, parents or lives with teens, or teaches, represents or works with youth in any capacity should inhale this story of menacing youth violence and one family's victory over the evil that spawns it. The Polecs' story will sear the hearts and souls of its readers and cause them to look closely at themselves, their children, their family life, their faith and their communities through a wholly different lens. In this book the brutal details of Eddie Polec's murder and the events that preceded and followed it read side by side with unfathomable hope and potential that is captured beautifully by the authors. The wave of social action that grew out of this family's experience with the tragedy of Eddie's death, the flawed 911 emergency system that failed him and the justice system that underserved him, has already effected changes in human service systems designed to protect life in Philadelphia and have sparked a proliferation of violence prevention programs in local school systems.

"In Eddie's Name" is the sometimes tender, sometimes outraged, but always very human account of what happened when seemingly innocuous and commonplace teen encounters exploded with tragic results. It is a story of family, school and community response to unspeakable trauma which can, and is being used as a very powerful teaching tool by kids, parents and youth-serving professionals and volunteers.

And in a most profound way, this story is also a heartfelt tribute to the Polec family's faith and courage and determination not to succumb as well to the evil that felled their son and brother.

I am 17 years old, and in june 2000 I was brutally assaulted by 3 kids with baseball bats and had to have reconstructive surgery on my skull. This happened about a mile from where eddie was killed, and I'm also a senior at cardinal dougherty high school, where eddie was enrolled. I read this book, and I must say it hit me hard because I was so close to receiving the same fate as eddie. Please if you can take some time to read this book so that we may spread the message of peace to the world, and stop future things like this from happening.

After watching the Polec's on Dateline NBC recently, I got this book from the library, read it and cried almost halfway through it. I was hoping that the book was fiction and not true but that was not the case. I have every respect for the Polecs, wanting to make the community a better place inspite of tragedy to their son Eddie,They had a wonderful son whose life was taken in a senseless tragedy. I recommend this book to anyone who has children.

A great book. In Eddie's Name deals with a nightmare event in the life of a family, and yet leaves the reader with hope. Once begun, it is impossible to put down. Although the subject matter is difficult ( the murder of an innocent young man by a gang of thugs) the way it's handled takes you beyond the violence. It's about strenght in the face of terrible pain, and faith, and real family values. By the end, I felt I'd gotten to know Eddie and his family. In a small way, I went through what happened to them and came out a richer, better person. On my strong suggestion, my 18 year old son also read it. He finished it in three days!

The true story of a senseless act of violence and its heart-breaking aftermath, "In Eddie's Name" is uniquely powerful in its ability to simultaneously awaken in the reader two strongly opposing forces usually found to be mutually exclusive: angry, moral indignation and then, understanding and forgiveness.

Told in a clear, concise, evenly journalistic manner, it is a story that grips you from the outset and propels you along a path of horror, loss and injustice that few have traveled with such dignity and grace as do the book's quietly heroic protagonists, the Polec family of Philadelphia.

Galvanized as I was, I read the book in one compelling evening and would recommend it without reservation to anyone who wonders whatever became of civility and the justice that was the inherent promise of the American social experience.

I was forced to read this book, and I thank God everyday that I was. I am now a graduate of Cardianl Dougherty High School, where Eddie would of graduated, and at the time when I entered CD all incoming freshmen were required to read In Eddie's Name. Well I myself can't stand to read, and I never did summer reading in grade school and I wasn't about to start in high school. Well something inside of my told me to read this book, so I did. And it usually takes me months to read a book but I couldn't but this book down at all, I finished it in a week. I cried my eyes out at most of the book, but at the end I learned a valuable lesson, that violence is not the answer to anything. I was fortunate enough as a freshmen as Dougherty to not of only learned this from the book but to also of learned it from John Polec, Eddie's father, himself when he came and talked to us during Increase the Peace Week. At Dougherty we were taught everyday that violence is not the answer and we have a story to go with why, and this past year another story was added to it, unfortunately. At the end of this school year,2005, a junior at Dougherty, Kenny Baptist, was killed. He was shot to death on his front steps by his sister's ex-boyfriend. I know that for sure violence in America must be stopped, but especially among teens, and that is why I have decided that I am going to promote non-violence by going to other schools and talking about Eddie's and Kenny's stories. And to each one I go to I am also going to recommend to each and every teen that they should pick up a copy of this wonderful book and read it, because in the end it is all worth while!

How the Polec's could be so forgiving is beyond my own faith. They really showed the rest of us how the power of God can overcome the worse hurt a parent can endure. In the description of the book, Amazon says there are 256 pages; I cried through at least 250 of them.

The brutal slaughter made me angry and cry at the same time. An innocent young man with his future still to be sought, was batted down on the steps of his own church. God have mercy on his killers. How in the name of all that is civil, normal, real, and humane can a bunch of teenagers use one of their peers for batting practice? I was and am apalled; what happened in these kids' past that allowed them to do this?

Eddie is currently in the arms of Jesus and has no pain, but I feel such sympathy for his wonderful Mom, Dad, Brother, and Sister. They are role models for all of us. And so is Eddie. May light perpectual shine upon him. This book hit me hard, but I would give nothing for having read it. I think it has helped me reflect and become more accepting of other people, people who are different than I.

Polec family, if you read these reviews, God bless you in all that you have done for your change of the laws. The innocent usually suffer more than the ones that were convicted. What a screwed up so-called justice system we have.

RonThomas@aol.com

The Polec family of Philadelphia suffered the greatest loss a family can experience, when their middle child, Eddie, was clubbed to death by teenagers from a neighboring town. The killers attacked Eddie and several of his friends to avenge a supposed slight to the killers' friend. Eddie had no involvement in that offense. The senselessness of this murder was compounded by the fact that Philadelphia's 911 system utterly failed to protect Eddie and his friends. The book portrays the Polec family's grace, its efforts to seek justice but to avoid revenge, and its refusal to commercialize or recover money through litigation. The authors were reporters in Philadelphia at the time, and wrote the book out of deep respect for the way the bereaved parents and siblings endured this loss and the murder trial. They sensitively deal with the fact that the persons responsible for Eddie's death were children, too. The story also focuses on the experience of the Polecs as victims when navigating the court system. It is well-written and uplifting, despite the tragic subject matter.

i read this book as soon as i heard it was published. i did not know eddie but my best friend of 5 years knew him, her whole family knew the polecs. it made me want to read it and understand what they all went through. that whole community suffered such a horrible tragedy, and somehow they all still came together to give comfort and hope to eachother. it is such a powerful book, the way it draws you into the polecs lives. every teen in highschool should read this book and come to an understanding that violence doe not solve anything. and it never will, it is sad that a sweet, young and innocent guy had to die in order for our justice system to improve just a little bit and it is sad that he had to die so that people could now see what this type of violent behavior has not only done to a family, but the entire community. i now know the polecs and they are the strongest people i have ever met, god bless them and may god give them strength and hope throughout all the days of their lives.

I grew up in the area near where the events of this book took place and was slightly familiar with them from conversations with family members then living in the area. It was shocking, to say the least, but neither the vileness of the crime nor the inadequacy of the city's response came as a complete shock to me in light of what I saw there on infrequent visits in the early 90s.

I purchased a used copy of In Eddie's Name primarily out of curiosity and with some trepidation, since crime stories of this general sort often disappoint and are frequently quite indifferently written. This was not the case with Freedman's and Knoedelseder's book which is splendidly done both as to writing and its tone. In particular, the authors manage to handle the family impact sensitively without being excessively maudlin and address the law enforcement and criminal justice issues on a "just the facts" basis that informs but leaves the reader to draw his or her inevitable ethical conclusions. By the time I was done with In Eddie's Name, I wondered why I haven't heard more of such skilled and able writers, particularly in a field occupied by so many hacks.

One area on which the book failed to enlighten me was the apparent animosity between the teenagers of the two neighborhoods leading to the outbreak that resulted in the crime. I recalled significant and repeated rumors of some bad feelings and group fights between adolescent boys from the Fox Chase-Philadelphia and Abington-Montgomery County area during my years in the area in the late 60s, although I imagine that this was based on a somewhat different social class dynamic than existed more than 25 years later. I do suspect that the authors overlooked something here, although it's equally likely that no amount of effort could ever have brought the full "back story" to light.

All of this is probably a more specific way of trying to answer the general question "why" with respect to the most senseless crime. Instead of becoming caught up on that issue which could only be a treadmill, Freedman and Knoedelseder move on in a more positive light to the many commendable things which the Polec family did to try to prevent worsening of tensions and, later, to attempt to avoid this sort of tragedy in the future. That, if nothing else, allows the reader to take something positive from a story beginning with the worst aspects of urban and suburban behavior.